


Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Existentialism, Family Drama, Friendship, Gen, Horror, Master of Death Harry Potter, Murder, Science Fiction, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-27 01:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 78,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15675297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: Having spent over fifty years as a notebook the fragment of soul who still refers to himself as Tom Riddle regains influence over the mortal plane and finds reality to be an ephemeral thing while Harry Potter, a young boy of eight, discovers that things both are and are not what they seem.





	1. Chapter 1

Tom Riddle was dreaming.

He watched his life move past him as one might watch a slowly moving river on a lazy afternoon. It reflected the sky and light at every turn, at times almost blinding, but he watched it nonetheless. Moments here and there caught his eye but only for a fraction of a thought before his eyes wandered again.

There was a moment in time where this river stopped, almost abruptly, and faded into the abyss. It was always that moment that drew his eyes, because as hard as he might have distracted himself with the colorful ephemeral past he knew that it was the abyss that was reality.

One day a young boy had a dream that he was a notebook, he watched the world out of blind eyes and deaf ears, the world trickling down to him instead through thoughts of ink left from the hands of men. In each black letter he tasted the feelings left behind; those sweet tangents of thought that had seeped down the white pages to his own starved lips. He knew however, even as a notebook, that he was truly a young boy only dreaming that he was a notebook and waited patiently for the day he would awaken.

He did wake up one day only to find himself confused, for his dream had seemed so real, and he wondered was he the boy dreaming of notebooks or the notebook dreaming of boys. Having dreamed of words for so long he found that he could no longer easily tell the difference, men and notebooks seemed to think the same thoughts and yearn for the same feelings. In fact, in a panic, he began to realize that he could in fact not tell the difference at all and could be either the notebook or the boy at that particular moment.

And so the story went, and so Tom Riddle dreamt it to be.

The abyss often watched him as well, with almost knowing eyes, not a black abyss but white. White like the thin, unmarked, pages of an empty journal filled with the potential of infinite thoughts and paintings and thus containing nothing at all. This, the abyss would say to him in its own silent tongue, is what you are as well; the potential of things.

He contemplated briefly throwing stones into that white leering grin the abyss often wore, but he had already thrown many of his own stones, thoughts shouted into the face of nothingness were reduced to nothing in themselves. He’d long since gotten tired of that game.

Tom Riddle had not always been dreaming just as he had not always been a notebook. He had once been human, no that wasn’t quite right, he had once been a wizard. He’d found, after much contemplation, that they weren’t quite the same thing. Before he had been a wizard he had been human but wizardry had changed him, had changed his thoughts, and his essence as well. Wizards were innately powerful, they had no need of a higher god, saw nothing of the fatalistic nature of life only their own power and the power of their peers. They had no sense of true tragedy.

As a wizard the young Tom Riddle had fully embraced this philosophy and made it his goal tower above death itself. He spent years researching, sharpening his knife upon his own ambition, until one day he found a way to circumvent his mortal nature. The young Tom Riddle, the wizard Tom, created a new name for himself, a flight from death, and like a well-practiced actor fashioned a new face that would bring him power. He planned his immortality, deciding to divide his soul into pieces and to hide them in the world’s wonders. The first piece he placed inside a plain black notebook, and there it remained, the Tom Riddle that was not quite Tom Riddle.

After that moment Tom Riddle in the notebook lost touch with the Tom Riddle in the outside world, Lord Voldemort as he called himself. For a while they communicated, the dark lord writing in thin spidery letters that tasted of ash, but then the words stopped and the abyss began to grow.

He had very little knowledge of the outside world, only brief tangents he had gathered from his other’s mind, but that had been many years ago or perhaps only days, time was somewhat warped inside the diary. For a while this had concerned him, as he had wanted to know if his other had been successful or not, and he had paced through the corridors of his prison with his eye forever trained on the abyss waiting for a word or two to pass through. Those had been the days when he had raged against his voluntary imprisonment, screaming at the abyss, in order that someone might tie him back to the physical plane.

Eventually though Tom began to dream, and in dreaming he realized he was no longer Tom Riddle. In horrified thoughtful silence he watched as the memories rolled past and realized that he couldn’t recognize himself in a single one, it was like watching a prototype of himself, vaguely similar in features and thought but only in a rough manner. Only the beginnings of his personality and thoughts were in that boy, but nothing more than a distant bond at best. If he wasn’t the boy he used to be then, he continued thinking in dumb silence, how could he be that man on the other side of the notebook?

He owed that other Tom Riddle nothing, no allegiance, no loyalty, because in the end they were not the same. He was Tom, the notebook, the other was Tom, the god, and they would never again be what they were.

After that he no longer screamed for attention from the outside world, nor for the table scraps of letters left by his counterpart, and settled instead to watch over the flow of his life before the abyss (the notebook) and wonder if he was a notebook or a man or something that was neither at all.

Somehow he felt that outside his white walls the world was burning, even while he dreamed, and somehow he could only watch those invisible flames with patient dead eyes. He sometimes brought himself to wonder what forgotten corner he had been stashed in, what dusty bookshelf now held his prison unknowingly, and did it matter at all anymore?

So he sat still within himself, attempting to feel the altered pathways of time within the notebook, and watched as his own mind floated past him among the pristine pages.

Only then when an eternity had passed, or perhaps in an instant, the game board changed and the words reigned down from the physical realm.

_Dear Diary,_

And there was noise, color, and light.

They were not his other’s words, not the sickly lettering of the Lord Voldemort, but rather the thin messy scrawl of a child who has written too few words in his lifetime. The voice, even in those two words, retained a brightness a sense of faith and trust in the notebook itself that caused the very foundations of the pages to succumb to tremors.

But even as he took in those first two words the onslaught continued, humming in his ears and through his eyes, thought emotion and words everywhere.

_Today the Dursley’s took me to the book shop. I almost had to stay with Mrs Figg but she was busy today, so I came too.  Aunt Petunia says Dudley needs lots and lots of books for school, Dudley doesn’t want any but they’ll get them anyway. I like books sometimes, but books are for Dudley to learn and not for me._

(Tom listened, fascinated as the emotions and thoughts roll past him. He imagined that hearing this in person or perhaps even hearing it after having been used to human interaction, and he would be bored out of his mind but now everything is color.)

_I didn’t think I’d get anything. But then I found a notebook, I guess you Diary, and it was really weird but not weird. You seemed alive, or living._

(He sensed the wonderment in the tone of the words, but not wariness, only a bizarre sense of rightness as if the boy hadn’t been surprised but felt he should have been.)

_It was like a hum, or a beating heart. Not hearing with ears, or touching, just a feeling like a drum beat in my head. And it was there, everywhere, but not real at all._

_I wasn’t going to take it, but then I took it to the clerk and he said there was no price, that I could keep it. Just like that. I don’t have many things, so even if I don’t write a lot I took it, because it gets to be mine._

_That’s all for today._

“Wait!”

And just as suddenly as it was there it was gone. As if it had never existed and Tom Riddle was dreaming once again.

* * *

Eventually Tom began to piece together the events that had led him to Harry Potter. Not through any clues of his own but rather through Harry’s comments that sporadically would drift down from that other reality.

He did not know what had happened to his other half, Voldemort as he had taken to calling himself exclusively toward the end, but it could not have been the success he desired. Somehow by nineteen eighty eight the horcrux that was Tom Riddle’s diary had found its way into a muggle book store and into the hands of an unsuspecting child.

As Tom sat and thought within his empty realm he considered the events that could have occurred in reality.

One, somehow his other self had been defeated and now his followers had placed the notebook in a place where it would not be detected until Tom inside the notebook had enough time to gain the power necessary to take physical form. Tom doubted this was the case, because although it would be the least detectable means of resurrection (no one would bother checking for magical comas in a muggle child) given the pureblood status of his followers he did not believe they would give the notebook to anyone other than a wizard.

Two, Voldemort had hidden the notebook (or forgotten it) in a neglected hiding spot that eventually turned into a building or some other muggle structure and slowly but surely the notebook had made its way through hands until it had reached a book store with no price tag to be picked up by a young boy. This, he also doubted, as Voldemort’s entire purpose in conquering Magical Britain was to obtain immortality and power, he would have kept the notebook well-guarded and any muggle that had stumbled across it would have died an instantaneous and terrible death.

And three, Voldemort had been defeated and his followers were left unaware of the importance of the black notebook he had kept with him. Having given it to one of his more trusted lieutenants Voldemort passed on unaware that the notebook sat in the house of a pureblood in the open for anyone to see. When the followers were found by the aurors, and it would not be too soon after given the mental status of the average minion, they would find the notebook sitting out in the open but find it uninteresting and throw it into the muggle abyss where it drifted until it found a bookshop.

It had been a long time since he’d thought politics. At first he had been tempted to throw his curiosity into the abyss, after all it wouldn’t truly matter until the events unfolded further, eventually reaching the world within the notebook. Something stopped him though, not quite a thought but not a whim either. No, it was a conviction.

The boy wrote diligently, almost obsessively, as if he had nothing else to do with his time. Not always words or reports of his days either, sometimes snippets from stories he had read, movies he had seen, and small childish sketches. And with all of these were sentiment and thought behind them, the boy poured his soul into the pages and filled everything he touched with color. In the distance of the pages Tom could see the northern lights that were Harry’s memories, dancing just beyond his own, lacing into one another with ease and life.

His name was Harry Potter and he lived with his aunt, uncle and cousin. He called them the Dursleys and very rarely spoke of them at all, with little emotion only a dull resignation and slight bitterness. His parents had died when he was very young, he had been told in a car crash, but his other relatives had thought they were terrible people and thus Harry didn’t get many details and didn’t ask.  He worked the house most days and slept in a cupboard beneath the stairs, on the walls he kept various drawings and a few toys he had managed to steal from Dudley when he wasn’t looking.

They called him a freak.

Harry had noticed that odd things did occur around him every once in a while, but he had dismissed them easily enough, believing himself to be perfectly average in every way he could think of.

The thing was that he wasn’t. Even through the memories, thoughts, words, and emotions Tom could sense the raw power leaking from the boy. Everything around him burned, his magic ever expanding, until Tom began to wonder if there was such a thing as infinite power not to be earned through blood, sweat, and tears but rather through pure chance.

Harry Potter was eight years old and no one had told him he was a wizard. Harry Potter felt more powerful than anyone Tom had ever met. Harry Potter was completely unaware of his talents and seemed he would be likely to remain so even with the letter he would no doubt receive.

And this was where Tom found himself facing a decision. By all rights if he had been deliberately placed with this child he would be expected to drain his life force, return to the mortal plane, and attempt to find his other and pledge his loyalty to the cause. It was what was expected of him, even if it wasn’t the case he had been handed a priceless opportunity in young powerful Harry.

However, that was all terribly predictable.

Tom had spent more than fifty years as a notebook, he was getting tired of predictability.

What was it that tied him to his other self? A soul? Voldemort had severed those ties long ago. A history? The memories before the split were hazy at best only becoming clear with much introspection and even then they seemed more like the experience of watching a play rather than memory itself. There was the compulsion to be loyal, to remain true to himself, but upon reflection it proved to be little more than that. A habit.

Should Tom ever return to the mortal plane and his other self was still alive who was to say his other wouldn’t simply destroy him in fear of being usurped.

Tom in the notebook might no longer have the human magic or the body but given how likely his other was to rent out space and magic to the notebook; he felt that he would find more success in a field that was not Voldemort.

He could easily destroy young Harry Potter, steal his body and magic, and then he would find himself with all the mighty power of an eight year old wizard living with abusive muggles. Again.

Besides he was curious.

So with a small smile he began to speak back to the words that fell from beyond the abyss and waited to see what might happen next.

* * *

For the first time in his life Harry felt he had found something special. Not only special, but his, meant for him alone and no one else. For a while the notebook had just been a notebook, he’d noticed that the words disappeared as soon as he wrote them but nothing more than that had occurred. He’d written in each entry and watched as they disappeared, figuring it would be nice if Dudley ever decided to read his diary only to find nothing was there.

But one day the notebook started talking back.

Right after finishing his diary entry for the day, this one on Dudley, he waited for the words to fade before shutting the notebook. The words did absorb back into the pages (or whatever it was the notebook did) but then just before he was about to close it spots of ink began to bleed back through.

He watched fascinated as a single sentence appeared.

_Well, that was enlightening._

Harry dropped the notebook so that it remained open, that single sentence remaining in very legible black letters staring back at him.

(What was really strange though was that in spite of the elegant lettering Harry could feel the sarcasm dripping from every word, almost as if a voice had accompanied those letters.)

After a minute or so another sentence appeared.

_I’m going to assume you’re still in the room and are just ignoring me out of shock and terror that a sentient journal actually exists. Do try to reply soon though, my sense of real time gets muddled if there are too many delays in your responses.  
_

Harry wasn’t sure what he thought of when he pictured a talking notebook but it certainly wasn’t this. He gaped at the black notebook and the letters that continued to appear. They stared back at him patiently, almost with a sense of wry amusement.

He grabbed for his pen which he had dropped on his cot and hurriedly scratched out the first question that came to mind, “Who are you?”

_I think it’s a bad sign when I have difficulty answering that question._

There was a slight pause, the words fading back into the notebook. Finally a new statement appeared.

_You may call me Tom._

Harry felt that he was missing some key word there that would explain what the notebook, Tom, meant but he couldn’t wrap his head around it.

Finally he wrote his next question, “Are you a magic notebook?” He felt kind of silly writing it but then he wasn’t sure what else there was to write.

(And again he got that curious feeling of emotions emanating from the book, that same amusement strengthened), _Yes._

“Oh,” Harry said out loud to himself. So, Harry had found a magic notebook in a book store and it was now talking to him and appeared to be wanting a conversation. He really couldn’t think of anything to say though. Finally after much thought he wrote, “Were you always a notebook.”

_That is also a difficult question to answer._

Again this statement faded rather rapidly and was replaced with new lines of carefully written words.

_I am not certain I am a notebook for one thing, I reside within the notebook, take the notebook’s form, but I am not the notebook itself. I do not feel connected to its physical form, for example I have no way of detecting the reality that exists outside the notebook without a human mediating (in this case you) whereas if I was more securely tied to the notebooks physical form I’d think I’d have more sensory perception than I do now. (Although without a nervous system everything is kind of iffy isn’t it?)_

_To answer your question though, I have not always taken this form. However, I’m not entirely certain that the being I was before entirely represents me now. I have his memories, but little else, I am connected to him by threads that would be easily severed._

_I suppose you would say that I was once human._

Harry read this and then reread it, it really didn’t make too much sense to him. Tom, he was finding was way smarter than Harry was, probably older too from the sound of it. He decided to boil down that giant rant into that last sentence. Tom had once been human. Well, that led him to the next question.

He waited until the letters faded before writing again, “How did you become a notebook?”

There was a longer pause this time, but Harry knew that this pause was different. The others Tom had been thinking of how to phrase his thoughts, this was a darker pause, as if he knew the exact answer and was not sure he wanted to say it. When the response appeared it was a single word, darker than the others had been, and it carried a flatness that seemed to echo throughout Harry’s cupboard.

_Patricide._

Harry didn’t want to ask what that meant, the tone told him enough.

Thankfully at that point he was saved by needing to complete chores for Dudley, he wrote hastily back, “Look, I have to go, I’ll be back later.”

The feeling of doom in the room lightened somewhat as Tom responded, _Of course._

Since then Harry had started talking to Tom multiple times per day. At first he had wondered if he really wanted to, Tom was really confusing sometimes, but somehow he had found himself picking up his pen. Still, every once in a while he would get that feeling of foreboding, almost dread as he watched those foreign letters rise up to meet him, a feeling that he could only describe with words he snatched from Tom as in his own head he could only think of the word _bad_.

But, he’d think, Tom was really his only friend. Tom was the first person to actually talk to him, help him, listen to what he said without assuming he was a freak. More than that even, despite his uncaring tone Harry got the feeling that Tom did care, and carefully listened and remembered everything Harry said for later use.

It was interesting though, talking to Tom. Sometimes Tom would ask about Harry’s life, very few times he’d give details of his own. Very soon though Harry discovered that Tom knew _everything_. Before Harry had met Tom he’d been an average student, he’d never really applied himself, but afterwards he’d found himself proclaimed as a gifted student just from things he’d learned offhand from Tom. Harry had taken a dictionary and thesaurus into the cupboard beneath the stairs just to translate some of the things Tom said. Oftentimes the most interesting topics were the hardest to understand.

It was nice, Harry thought, having a friend. He could see what all the fuss was about. It just made things so much more bearable, to be able to get away from the world, even if he had to do it in a cupboard with an enchanted notebook. He didn’t always tell Tom what was going on in the real world, he’d never told Tom everything that happened at the Dursleys’, but even without that he felt that there was no need to talk because Tom was willing to listen.

Somehow though this thought didn’t always feel exactly right. It wasn’t so much that Tom didn’t ask and left Harry to decide what he would tell, it was as if Tom already knew. As if, despite his claims, he somehow saw beyond the walls of his own reality and into Harry’s. There was an odd quietness that occurred whenever Harry mentioned the Dursleys, and for a moment the room would become cold, but then it would pass and they’d talk about other things.

This, Harry would think using one of Tom’s borrowed phrases, is the shadow of things to come.

And yet in spite of this thought he couldn’t abandon the notebook, couldn’t leave Tom to a fate of dust and mold that would await him in the cupboard’s forgotten corner. Late at night, the notebook closed and his eyes staring at the low ceiling, he would think of everything that meant anything to him and would find Tom near the top of the list. It was one thing, he thought, to have a friend but this was something else… Something far more worrying.

But he couldn’t condemn Tom to _that place_.

Tom called it his kingdom, his garden, all sorts of terms, but every time he went into detail Harry felt his dry amusement fade into some feeling Harry couldn’t name. It was the feeling of looking into a deep well, where one couldn’t see the bottom, and throwing a stone in desperately listening for it to hit the water, and never hearing a thing. A place without time, Tom had said, without change, without space, without anything but his own thoughts and emotions. Harry hadn’t read the bible much, the Dursleys weren’t very religious, but after speaking with Tom he didn’t think Hell was filled with fire and screaming and pain, Hell was the notebook.

Besides, they were only idle thoughts.

So Harry asked Tom about the world and ignored the creeping certainty in his stomach that these were the shadows painted by large and looming events that stood just beyond the horizon.


	2. Chapter 2

It couldn’t really last.

He should have been more careful with his test scores. The thing was that the more he spoke with Tom the more he felt Tom was a part of him, the things Tom said in passing or explained in detail became part of his own knowledge. After a month of talking to Tom every day multiple times per day suddenly multiplication and division just wasn’t that challenging anymore. More than that though he had been proud, perhaps for the first time in his life, because he had someone to show those achievements to.

He thought his teacher would be impressed. He thought the Dursleys might even be proud of him, if only for a moment.

He didn’t think he’d be accused of cheating.

They didn’t believe him, he knew it the moment they called him over to talk with them. When they looked at him they saw the delinquent and freak that the Dursleys always told him that he was. He didn’t even say anything, their eyes reflected the oversized frayed clothing and his own green eyes, and they saw the thief standing there in Harry’s place.  

The Dursleys thought worse though, they knew he hadn’t cheated, but they said he did anyway. He knew that they knew he hadn’t, that Dudley just wasn’t that bright or motivated, but they lied and punished him anyway.

He’d never been sent to the cupboard for that long before. He stared at the ceiling, the diary open, and his hand on a pen willing the words to come to tell Tom about everything. He’d always been able to talk about the easy things, like learning things in school, visits to the park, crazy Mrs. Figg across the street but somehow the painful things just wouldn’t come. There weren’t any words for the Dursleys, nothing he could think of that would explain why this trip to the cupboard was so different from the others. He had nothing to say, instead he looked to his shelf and saw the toys that had been tossed aside by Dudley only to be remembered by Harry when no one was looking, and looking at them he felt again that wordless pang of emotion that he just couldn’t describe.

Eventually he fell asleep and dreamed about Tom.

They were sitting on a grassy hill by a lake; beyond them wild flowers bloomed under the midday sun and in the distance white peaks brushed that clear blue sky. Harry was wearing the oversized clothing he had been in when he fell asleep and though he wasn’t wearing his glasses somehow he could still see. Across from him sat a thin young man with dark hair and pale blue eyes. The man wasn’t looking at Harry, but rather out into the distance beyond the mountains and the flowers, he sat casually leaning back on pale thin hands in dark clothing that was neither new nor old. Somehow, though he’d never seen him before, Harry knew it was Tom.

“Hello Harry,” Tom said turning his head and smiling slightly at the young boy.

“Tom?” Harry asked in surprise rubbing his eyes and then blinking as Tom remained, “Where are we? What are you doing here?”

“We are dreaming.” Tom said and plucked a wild flower bringing it up to his eyes to inspect it, “We are between thought and reason, where all reality bends itself to the whims of its maker. This is your kingdom Harry.”

A breeze caught the flower and blew it from Tom’s loose grip, the flower flew out toward the horizon and eventually out of sight. They both watched it, Harry solemnly, and Tom with that odd timeless expression that Harry couldn’t quite name.

Kingdom, he’d said. Tom always talked like that about the notebook, about it being his kingdom, he’d never said he was god of it but it seemed pretty clear that he’d always thought that way.

Harry didn’t really care about this dream-world though, his mind kept straying again to his state in the cupboard and at school; everyone staring with those sharp eyes and accusing with just a single glance for judgment. Except for Tom, but maybe Tom was just better at hiding it.

“Are we friends, Tom?” Harry asked, it was the first time he had. Every other time he’d just assumed or felt that it was true. Harry had never really had a friend before, he’d read about it in books and seen Dudley with his friends though, and so when he met Tom he’d just assumed that they were friends. He didn’t look up for fear of Tom’s expression.

“Of course.” Tom answered without hesitation.

He said it so easily, without a shred of doubt, as if it were unthinkable that Harry wouldn’t be a friend. And yet, why was it that everyone else did the opposite? It had always been that way, not just the cheating thing, but they had always looked at him as if they had known he was a freak. Even without hearing a word from the Dursleys they had looked at him and just known.

“It’s because they’re human.”

Harry looked up to find Tom looking at him, those cold pale blue eyes burning into his, tearing through his soul to read the doubts flying through his mind.

“What?” Harry managed to say while looking away from those too observant eyes.

“It’s in their nature to react with suspicion and fear to things they are ignorant of.” Tom continued, “They see you and are forced to confront the ineffable nature of the universe they live in, and they hate it.”

Harry paused and with horror asked the question he had not dared to ask, not ever, not even to himself in his darkest moments, “What does that make me? Not human?”

There was a pause and the world seemed to stop, if only for a moment, before Tom’s voice broke through.

“No, it just makes you self-aware.” Tom looked out to the lake for a moment and then said softly, “I told you that I was human once.”

Tom never talked about when he was human, whenever Harry asked he flat out refused to answer, or avoided the question. As far as Tom was concerned, Tom had once said, he had always been a notebook.

“I grew up in an orphanage, and much like you I hated it and it hated me. They looked at me the way they look at you for all of my life. So no Harry, you did nothing to deserve this, but that does not mean it will ever stop.”

How had he known? How had he known what Harry had been thinking? He’d never said anything to Tom, never really talked about it, yet here they were with Tom reading every stray thought that passed through his head. Or perhaps it was simply obvious, it seemed obvious to everyone else.

“Why?”

Tom smiled, it seemed an odd expression for him, strangely tender even while his eyes were cold, “Because you are special, Harry, and somewhere beneath the ignorance and incompetence they know it.”

Special, was that what he called it? The Dursleys called it freakish, the school different, the students weird; everyone had their own name for it. Tom’s was the only one that was even remotely positive, but that didn’t make it true.

“I’m not special.” Harry said shaking his head.

Tom waved the comment away with a single hand before lazily replying, “And I’m not a notebook. Harry, reality is that which when you stop believing it doesn’t go away. You have a gift that they will never possess.”

“What gift?” Harry spat out looking at Tom daring him to say anything, to lie directly to his face just like everyone else did.  

And here Tom seemed to pause, as if to consider Harry, the soft smile trickled from his lips until only a quiet intensity remained. As the silence drew on and Harry watched he felt himself growing angry, the reflection of his own difference resounding in his head, and all the while no one answering the question of why things were the way they were; he wanted to scream at Tom, at someone, anyone and just make them listen long enough so that they could explain.

“You’re a wizard, Harry.” Tom said finally.

The anger faded slowly, dripping from his fingertips, as he wondered if a word was enough to explain all the troubles in the world.

“A wizard?” Harry asked softly, “Is that what it’s called now?”

Tom’s lips twitched as if he wanted to smile but was schooling his expression for the sake atmosphere, “For thousands of years, yes. I suppose if you have trouble with the name you’ll have to take it up with the wizards themselves.”

And the world shifted itself onto a more pleasant axis where fairness seemed more possible than it had been before.

“There are others?”

Tom nodded.

And so Harry sat and listened as the notebook who called himself Tom Riddle revealed the history of his people and his true place in the world.

* * *

“Focus, Harry.”

Within the cupboard beneath the stairs an empty glass wobbled as if by an invisible wind.

“Concentrate.”

The glass began to shake more violently threatening to tip over the edge and roll onto the floor. Beyond the glass the boy with dark hair was beginning to sweat but even so his gaze did not falter from the tipping glass. Outside of the glass the world had ceased to matter, the cupboard fading into the background, until only the voice in his head and the glass remained.

And although Tom could not see him, trapped as he was inside the diary, he could feel the sheer amount of will coursing through Harry and out toward the glass. Through Harry he could see the glass, only the glass, and could feel Harry imposing his own laws of reality upon it.

And though he knew that Harry was not looking at the notebook, that the notebook had disappeared along with the rest of the cupboard, he knew that Harry heard every word he said. Yet even as he listened the words fell away as only the tilting cup remained.

Tom had called Harry a wizard but even as he had said it he knew that it was not strictly true. Harry would be called a wizard when he turned eleven, they’d teach him to become a wizard, but he would never be a wizard. No wizard possessed the raw power that coursed through Harry Potter’s veins.

The young Tom Riddle had been extremely powerful, more than power though he had been very intelligent, aware, and driven. Tom Riddle had wanted to prove himself, to defy the odds and will himself into greatness. His power, when compared to Harry Potter’s, was a speck of dirt on the side of the road. Distantly, Tom wondered what his counterpart was making of all of this or if he even knew such a source of magic existed in a human being.

It was a small wonder Harry was getting stares at school. He practically bled magic, even inside the realm of the notebook Tom could feel his aura crushing in overhead. The orphans had feared and despised Tom Riddle for the equivalent of parlor tricks, how could he have expected anything less in regards to Harry Potter.

Still, there was something in seeing those eyes again, children’s eyes that brought back too many memories of the human Tom Riddle. To his surprise Tom found that those eyes burned him as well as the boy.

He was not Harry Potter, only vaguely connected to him through strings of thought and emotion, and yet he felt as if they were staring through the boy and straight to him. The years melted away until he was in the orphanage once again, long before he knew of Hogwarts existence.

Within the notebook his surroundings transformed until he was beside his cot in that bleak gray place. His bare feet rested against the cold and creaking wooden floor boards, his hands resting in his lap, and once again he was a child no older than nine when the world was all that it seemed to be. Although he was alone in the room he knew the others waited just outside, waiting to strike him and beat him down, and if he concentrated hard enough he could even hear their whispers. On the table before him a glass wobbled as if by an invisible wind and his eyes narrowed, willing it to tip over, because like dominoes with the cup the rest of the world would fall.

The glass reflected not only his thin face but the injustices of the world around him, the world he must face if only for his own survival. It was a pale and dreary thing but it was his and he would fight for his place in it even if it damned him to hell, as he always knew it would.

Within and without of the notebook the two glasses fell to the side simultaneously and two dark haired children smiled slightly in victory as they began to realize their destiny.

“Very good, Harry.”

And the boy in the orphanage was gone until only the notebook remained.

* * *

Harry was beginning to hate school. Before he’d met Tom it hadn’t seemed so bad, it’d been an escape from the Dursley’s at any rate. Life seemed to be divided like that, before Tom and after Tom, and though Tom claimed that it was a bit of a dramatic sentiment it seemed true.

He’d never noticed the staring before he’d met Tom. Oh sure, he knew that they didn’t necessarily like him and that he really didn’t have any friends but he didn’t notice their eyes. He’d been too preoccupied avoiding Dudley and just trying to fit in, now he knew that he never would.

He wasn’t sure if he was happy, relieved, or sad about that. In some ways he did feel lighter, more free to look around and really see the world, but somehow that world seemed darker than it ever had before. At least there were others, Tom swore that there were others and Tom was _always_ right.

One day they’d come and find him, Tom said they’d come for him when he was eleven, and they would take him to the world where people like them existed. Wizards and witches, everything he had ever dreamed and more. He was eight now, that was just a few more years, and then surely they’d be there and take him from the Dursley’s to visit fantastic worlds like the ones he saw in his dreams with Tom.

So Harry went to school even though he knew he would never really need it again, he did his chores for the Dursleys, and whenever their backs were turned he practiced magic, so that he’d be ready when they came for him.

Even so, school was becoming difficult. The teacher never called on him anymore, never even looked at him. Before that wouldn’t have bothered him, he wouldn’t have even noticed before, but now he couldn’t help but see it. Harry had been a mediocre student before he’d met Tom, he’d never really tried knowing perhaps subconsciously that it would serve him no good to get too far ahead of Dudley. He couldn’t help it now though, it felt like sometimes he was Tom and that Tom’s knowledge just slipped out. Everything was so easy for Tom, multiplication and spelling were nothing to him, it was like breathing, he just did it and so Harry did too. She didn’t talk about cheating anymore but he could tell she thought he was anyway.

They were doing book reports today, watching the presentations he knew he had picked the wrong book. He’d picked a book that was too hard but it was too late to change now, and it wasn’t like it really mattered anyway, they only had three years.

He took notes but listened with half an ear, in his mind he began to converse with Tom. He’d found that the more he talked with Tom the easier it was to converse, as if their invisible connection grew with use. A week or so after being told he was a wizard Tom began to be able to talk to him without having to use the notebook.

It was an odd feeling, it was almost like holding a conversation except not. Tom didn’t feel like a person, sure sometimes he saw expressions or positions in his mind but Tom wasn’t there. He lacked physical presence. It wasn’t even like a voice in his head, it was just a feeling, like the feeling of magic, whispering to him without using his ears to hear.

_What do you think Dudley’s going to do?_ Harry asked Tom. He got the feeling that the question exasperated Tom, Tom really didn’t like Dudley too much and preferred not to talk about him, but Harry knew he was bored enough to answer anyway.

_Fail._ Tom replied shortly.

_Well, yeah, but I mean what do you think he’s going to present on?_

Harry liked to offer Dudley the benefit of the doubt every once in a while, he didn’t always fail assignments, but Harry had learned pretty early on that Tom was always more or less right about these kinds of things. He also didn’t like to be told he was wrong; he tended to verbally snap, or at the very least only respond in short sentences. He’d never outright say, I told you so, after he’d been proven right but he’d say something that really implied it.

_Why should I care what your fat cousin presents for his book report?_ Tom replied in the same almost irritated tone.

Harry didn’t really have an answer to that, because he didn’t really know why he himself cared either. He felt like he had some obligation to care, because Dudley was his cousin, but didn’t know where it really came from. He frowned, watching the girl presenting stumble over words as she described the book she’d read. Uncle Vernon and aunt Petunia had never really treated him like family, not the way other families treated their children, so he wasn’t sure when he decided to pretend that they did.

Thankfully Tom didn’t choose to respond to that. Tom stayed rather quiet about the Dursleys, whether to spare Harry’s feelings or because he disliked them too much to talk about them Harry didn’t really know but he was grateful at any rate.

_How will they find me?_ Harry asked instead, thinking of the wizards who would come on his eleventh birthday.

_They sent me a letter, but that was a long time ago, things may have changed._

Though he didn’t say anything more Harry felt that line of questioning abruptly end and knew that Tom wouldn’t answer another question like that even if Harry asked. Tom dealt out details from his past as he saw fit and rarely dispensed any more with any questions. Harry tended not to ask either; they felt like Tom’s Dursley questions, something too dark and full of feeling to be touched.  Even so there was a hint of Past in those words, of grief and resentment, and Harry couldn’t help but shudder. No, he wouldn’t make it a habit of questioning Tom about where he came from.

What he really wanted to ask was why he had to wait. He’d asked already though and Tom had given one of his not-answers that he sometimes did to complicated or painful questions. Why couldn’t they find him now? Why would they leave him with his aunt, uncle, and cousin who hated him? If there were others surely they understood, surely they could see it too, hadn’t they suffered through their own English classes?

Why would they make him wait in cupboards, practicing magic until his head pounded, instead of teaching him themselves?

He wanted to scream at them, at Tom, to make someone or anyone answer his question. He didn’t though, instead he let it sit inside and simmer. Three years. He had three years. He would live, he’d get better, and then they’d come for him and he’d never have to be locked in a cupboard ever again.

And there was Dudley now, at the front of the class with his note cards ready to present his book. Harry shifted in his seat, unconsciously alerting himself to pay more attention to his cousin. Dudley caught the look and sneered slightly before looking at the teacher waiting to begin.

Somewhere in the back of his mind Tom waved Dudley off as being a nuisance and unworthy of his time.

Even so Harry watched as Dudley gave a presentation on a book aunt Petunia had read to him. Harry should have known aunt Petunia or uncle Vernon would help with Dudley’s project, apparently that was a family thing to do. So, Dudley wouldn’t fail then.

_I didn’t necessarily mean this idiotic book report, although given his rather impressive track record it was a fair assumption to make._ Tom spoke up then, surprising Harry but before Harry had a chance to get a thought in edgewise Tom continued, _Dudley will fail in life, he will always be an overweight little monster, no matter his age. He may pass this class, he may even pass this assignment, but his future is as good as set in stone._

Was it terrible that those words made Harry feel relieved, almost happy? He tried not to think about it, and watched the presentation instead. But Tom wouldn’t give him a moment’s rest, it felt as if Tom was looking through him, as if he were glass, to stare at Dudley’s image and dissect it slowly with his thoughts.

Tom’s calm and authoritative voice overshadowed Dudley’s presentation until all Harry could hear were the words echoing in his head, _It’s his parents fault really, spoiled him rotten. From the moment he was born Dudley Dursley was doomed to a life of entitlement and mediocrity; incompetence and ignorance appear to be a vicious cycle in this case. Feeling mediocre and entitled themselves, his parents have passed on this disease to their son where it has grown like a cancer._

Harry stopped writing; his pen halting for fear that Tom’s words might slip through his fingers and onto the page.

_The truly pathetic thing is that none of them are aware enough to realize they’re trapped. They go on about their lives, poisoning themselves with their greed and bitterness, until they’ve stripped their souls bear. They are caricatures._

And in his eye Dudley grew rounder, his face more jeering, until he stood like a child’s play thing before the class; the fool giving a jest to the empty faces of the high court, nothing more than an abysmal joke. There was that feeling again, that lashing out within his own soul, telling him that he shouldn’t think such things that such things weren’t meant to be said and yet the anger was getting harder to suppress.

The magic had opened his eyes and now he found he could no longer contemplate his own contented blindness any longer. He couldn’t go back to what he was, to that small frightened boy he had been, who believed in honor and blood relatives and authority. More importantly, as each day passed, as the magic flowed through him and outside of him, he found that he did not want to.

And yet he felt that he should want to.

Tom said the realm of the notebook was made of an abyss, that it was in essence a great chasm of thought and feeling, and Harry felt that he teetered over that very abyss now. The people surrounding him slowly shifted into their cartooned and leering forms, the room became jagged and the shadows grander and less complex than before, only Harry retained his essence.

Three years, only three more years, and the others would come for him and he would be free.

It was a mantra, a prayer that he said each night to himself before he allowed exhausted sleep to claim him. Tom had told him that they would come for him when he was eleven and Tom was always right.

He breathed out and the feeling slowly faded and Dudley returned to his normal size and shape, the other students regained their faces, and the shadows drifted until they became less jagged and dark. He brought up his pen and began writing notes on the presentation once again.

_You shouldn’t say things like that._ Harry finally replied back to Tom, _he is my cousin you know._

He got the feeling Tom dismissed the comment, just as easily as he dismissed Dudley’s existence. Unsettled Harry pressed on.

_I mean it, Tom,_ Harry thought while pushing away his own prior feeling of apathy, _him, aunt Petunia, and Uncle Vernon are the only real family I have. That has to mean something._

Tom didn’t respond, but somehow Harry knew that it wasn’t because Tom didn’t know what to say, but rather because he felt that Harry wasn’t quite willing to listen to it yet. Like Harry had yet to learn some fundamental truth in the universe that couldn’t simply be explained but rather had to be seen.

The silence unnerved Harry more than any argument could, _Well, it does mean something._ Harry snapped, but the presence in his mind did not change, gave almost no sign of hearing those words at all. Merely sat and let Harry think over his own words.

Dudley’s presentation ended and the next student came up to the front of the class.


	3. Chapter 3

It took Tom a month or so to garner enough of a connection to start stealing Harry’s body. The first few times had been rather demanding. He had grown so used to creating his own stimulus within the notebook that to actually perceive that which was not himself almost shattered his conscious thought. His first attempt had been in the darkened cupboard, Harry long since having drifted off to sleep, he had opened Harry’s eyes and his black surroundings became blinding. In abject terror he had flung himself out and back into the relative safety of the diary where he caught himself and attempted to become nothing for a little while.

Within the diary, rethinking on the experience, he wondered if in that moment he had seen the face of god. (The atheist in him balked at the thought but then again the atheist in him hadn’t been too certain on the existence of souls either so he suspected that didn’t say much.) He wondered if reality had always been so jarring and he had merely brushed its nature aside before the diary’s creation.

It progressively became easier, the pain diminished as he remembered how to use eyes again as well as all his other senses. Sure there had been a few embarrassing moments of running into walls and tripping over feet, but since there was no one to see it and Harry just assumed that Dudley was the cause of the multitude of bruises there was no real harm done. After mastering the art of maneuvering, a task he’d found harder than he had assumed it would be, he began to put his time in the physical realm to a more practical use. He’d decided since Harry slept and therefore was doing nothing productive, that Tom would take the nights for him. Thus the body of Harry Potter became an insomniac.

The first few nights he’d made his way to London. The world had changed so drastically in fifty years; the city was brighter and louder and filled with more life than it had ever been during the war. People laughed and smiled as they crossed the streets, shop windows glittered and glowed beneath neon lighting, and everyone seemed to possess a sense of purpose that lead their feet in an unquestioned direction. The grimness was gone, shadowed alleys and dark figures still lurked in the corners, but they did not have that hopeless bomb-riddled cast that had been so prevalent toward the end of his youth. The city reached ever skyward, without bright fires burning upon the rooftops, without the wailings of distant sirens.

There had been signs of this in Little Whinging, small things, but trapped as he was beneath the stairs he could close his eyes and smell the orphanage. Little Whinging was a parallel universe to his own past but it wasn’t the world. It wasn’t _London_.

He walked dazed through crowded streets passing by these unfamiliar people without glancing twice at their faces. These weren’t muggles, not the war haunted people he had seen in the streets and the orphanage, this wasn’t muggle London, it was as if it was the wizarding world itself so bright and full of life and wonder.

This was not his world. Fifty years and it had changed beyond recognition, he had realized that time had passed had moved beyond him and above him. Though he would never admit it, these happy people, and these bright night lights made him uncomfortable and he could help the haunted feeling inside him as if none of it was real and he was only dreaming worlds inside his head.

At first he simply wandered, a lone child darting through crowds of adults, head craned toward the towering buildings and attempting to see the stars beyond the harsh glare of the streetlamps. Every now and then a head would turn to stare at the small black haired child but then it would turn away as if in disinterest and move on. Finally though, tired of walking and looking and seeing he came to a rather bitter conclusion, “I am hopelessly out of touch.”

It was almost embarrassing.  

As a human Tom had been very quick to pick up the unsaid implications of culture and society, within a few years he had unraveled the inner workings of the wizarding world to the point where he could assemble and disassemble it with ease and convince the heirs of noble houses that they wanted a back-water mudblood orphan for their king. It would never have occurred to him, that while his back was turned, the war-torn muggle world could change beyond recognition. In the diary he had come to question many of the assumptions he had made when he was human, but his view of the stagnation of human nature had not been one of them. People were static dumb repetitive things that only had to be glanced at to be understood, that was common sense. Apparently though, it wasn’t.

(Well that wasn’t quite true, given Harry’s experiences Tom could quite easily say that human nature had not changed beyond recognition during his fifty year absence and had on the whole remained as predictable and dull as ever. Dudley Dursley was all the proof Tom needed to show the world, for all its grand posturing, that humans were basically cruel sacks of meat.)

He needed information, he needed research, to assimilate the world and examine its inner workings once again to learn if this bright well-lit city was simply a mask or if it was a metamorphoses.

The midnight strolls gave way fairly quickly to nights of reading rather thick textbooks in the poorly lit cupboard that the Dursleys had the gall to call a decent bedroom. He was starting to hate that cupboard. He’d considered moving out to the couch and casting a heavy duty notice-me-not charm it but something within him hesitated to touch Harry’s magic, it seemed wild and so very aware of his presence. The few times he had used it, apparition to London, a few notice-me-not charms he had felt the magic shift beneath him and turn toward him as if to see his face with too green eyes. So in the cupboard he stayed, using flashlights, and telling himself that while it may look incredibly cowardly for a man who had murdered his own father to fear the untrained magic of an eight year old one did not poke the sleeping dragon with a stick if they wanted to live in comfort. It was also easiest within the cupboard to avoid any run-ins with Vernon Dursley and the belt he often carried with him.

Harry seemed to have formed this same opinion long ago, probably before even conscious thought, and did his best to keep his head down and stay out of the family’s way. In the morning as he cooked breakfast his mind would enter the game of chess as he watched his family for the various signs that would dictate how he was to go about his day, was Dudley in a good mood, was Vernon having clients over for dinner, was Petunia unduly reminded of her sister, and for each sign there was a track of tested and tried responses that would minimize their destructive influence throughout the day.

To Harry his uncle, his cousin, and his aunt were not people (though he attempted constantly to convince Tom and himself that they were and were thus due their respect as sentient creatures) but rather they were cogs in the greater machine that made up reality; outside of his control but with a method to its madness. He was so unlike Tom had been, who had done everything within his power to fight back, who clawed and raged at the system fate had presented for him and said no as he tore it to pieces. Tom had seen the machine above his head, but when he looked up his first thought wasn’t to make it more efficient but rather to dismantle it and create something new.

Harry had changed though, was in the process of changing, with the revelation of magic he realized that reality was not quite as absolute as he had assumed it was. If up can become down, and will can become force, and notebooks can become gods, Harry would think to himself, then who’s to say if there are any rules at all? He looked at the almost nameless figures of authority in his life and questioned their presence and their purpose and he wondered if family was an implied thing rather than a true thing. There were several things he would not admit to himself, and there was an added desperation in his attempts to convince Tom of the inherent goodness of man, but through his eyes the world had gained that unrealistic edge that Tom had always been aware of. Things are not as they seem, the young wizard would think, and a wave of his hand to bring a spark of nothingness to life.

Yes, they were very different people, Tom Riddle and Harry Potter, and yet perhaps they were only reflections of each other held within convex mirrors. For while Harry Potter would never lynch little Billy’s bunny he would perhaps stare after its swinging body for a while and wonder if it was wrong to think so little on such trifles such as life, death, and rabbits.

In the body they shared the notebook named Tom ate the words out of textbooks brought home from the library and Harry learned to bring the colors and lights of his soul into the materialistic plane. He knew then, that if they were to look in a mirror and see those green eyes that their faces would not be so very different at all and that the cogs of the great machine were reflected in both their pupils.

They would own the world again one day, but for now they would settle for dry words and empty sparks.

* * *

Harry liked Tom dreams; at first they had been unnerving, because they were always so very fluid. One instant they would be standing in a field of golden wheat Tom affectionately called Elysium and the next they were walking on water where the sky became the sea and below them the stars whirled endlessly in dark waves of the abyss. The only thing that remained constant were themselves, the tall dark haired young man with the pale blue eyes and the boy with the glasses and the too-big clothes.

Tom swore that it was Harry’s mind, _your dreams your whims_ , he’d say with a shrug whenever the scenery changed to something less than pleasant but Harry didn’t feel that was strictly true. Sure, it probably was his mind, but Tom never seemed lost in the randomness but rather stepped on air as if it were a glass stair case and allowed it to lift him to the sky.

Harry found that he didn’t mind this so much, it was in Tom’s nature to be… well whatever the way Tom was. Tom was like the magic, he flowed and twisted and created reality out of himself but he was also very difficult to understand and prone to randomness.

Today, after much pleading from Harry, they were walking through a copy of London’s magical district. The busy street burst with color people bustling here and there as they desperately tried to get shopping done dressed in robes that were every color within the rainbow and then some more, inside windows magical items twinkled and glimmered inviting Harry in, and in the air there was a distinct scent of magic so pure that Harry could taste it.

Harry rushed ahead examining each and every window avidly, looking at all the doo-dads and what-nots and thingamajigs that whirred and blurred and sparkled, some clearer than others in Tom’s memory but all worth inspecting. He wanted to see everything, touch everything, to reassure himself that even though it was memory that it was still real.

“This is Diagon Alley, London’s main magical shopping district, this is where you’ll be taken for school supplies, general goods, and to create a wizarding bank accounts.” Tom said as he casually walked behind Harry with his hands in his pockets, he played the role of ‘tour-guide’ as he called it with an almost bored tone as if he was only doing it for Harry’s sake and not interested at all. Of course, Harry remembered, Tom had been here before so he probably wasn’t interested but he could at least try a little bit. “Actually,” Tom continued thoughtfully, “I suppose one might find every normal-day good here, well anything legal I suppose, the black market’s a few streets down and to the left.”

Harry still dashing from window to window, now inspecting one labeled “Quidditch Supplies”, ignored Tom’s tangent. Tom sometimes had a habit of talking about non-important things if he wasn’t interrupted enough. Not that Harry minded, sometimes they were really interesting things, but right now he was wondering why wizards had an entire shop for brooms when they really should just make a spell to clean things automatically.

“So all this is right in London?” Harry asked turning from the broom store to face Tom, amazed that such a noisy colorful place could be hidden, “Wow, I almost wish the Dursleys could see this, just to get a look at their faces you know?”

Tom grimaced at the last name and answered in a particularly bland tone, “Oh I’m sure they’d be quite thrilled.”

“You know, we’re not even supposed to say the word magic, they call it the m-word.” Harry informed Tom even as he rushed to something called an owlery and stared at the dozens of birds that looked at him with blank faces.

“I’ve noticed, I think your dear mother must have truly traumatized your aunt.” Tom said musingly as he stepped in line with Harry to examine the birds, “You know it’s always struck me as a little bit odd that wizards would choose owls of all birds to carry post, after all owls are the harbingers of death you think they’d send something a little more pleasant.”

Harry started at that and looked up at Tom, “My mother?”

Tom nodded absently still staring at the birds with that odd distracted look in his eyes, “Hm, yes, I think she must have been muggle-born. Of course, if they sent doves that’d just be too much, and they really are only glorified pigeons in the end. Ravens perhaps, just for the sake of irony?”

Harry forced Tom out of his contemplation by asking rather rapidly, “You think my mum was a wizard?”

Tom looked away from the window and turned to Harry with a rather bemused expression, “I believe I’ve told you that the politically correct term is witch, but yes I do think so. It would explain many things about your current living predicament.” Seeing Harry’s confused expression Tom elaborated drily, “Replace the word freak with wizard and it becomes a little clearer.”

“You mean,” Harry said slowly tasting the words and the hope even as he said them, “That my mum was like me, like you, that she….”

“That she walked down these very streets at one time in her life,” Tom continued for him in a lofty tone, motioning to the hustle and bustle that had so far steadily ignored the pair, “That she stood, perhaps, in front of this very window wondering which owl to buy. Yes, I believe she did.”

Harry wanted to grin, to smile and ask Tom more about his mother, but something in him faltered. He wouldn’t have noticed even a month ago but there were many words left unsaid there. The words crowded themselves in those pale blue eyes, so loud and large that Harry could see them. But it doesn’t matter, they said, because your mother is dead and she will never answer any of your questions or walk down this street again.

Harry turned slowly from the window and began to resume his walking down the streets. His mum was a wizard, no a witch Tom had said, she was just like him. She had the magic, just like him, not like a drunkard not like anything so ordinary and disgusting and wretched as that. Someone like him, no not like him, someone like Tom.

Harry’s smile dimmed as he remembered that Tom hadn’t just said the word witch. Muggle-born, he’d said too, according to Tom muggle meant people like the Dursleys, or like the teachers, or like everyone else who didn’t have the magic. So if she was muggle-born that meant her parents must have been like the Dursleys, that she’d sat at home for eleven years and just not known, thinking there must be something off, something tilted, when in truth London had secret magic in its veins all along and they just didn’t tell her.

Surely, he thought looking at this colorful place in Tom’s memory, it would have been better if they had known from the beginning.

The people in the streets continued to ignore them, so intent on their own lives, and somehow to Harry this place gained a sense of un-reality. It was such contained chaos, so bright and full of life, that it didn’t at all seem real. Harry wondered if a memory of Tom was in this crowd, small and human and lost among the cluster and ruckus.

Harry’s Tom was watching the crowd absently as well, perhaps having already found his human counterpart and tracking his movements with something like nostalgia in his eyes.

“What about my dad?” Harry asked abruptly, to draw Tom’s eyes from the crowd, “Was he a wizard too?”

“Given your aunt and uncle’s rather colorful descriptions I’d say yes.” Tom said with a shrug and a rather flat tone like he wasn’t really interested in parents or ancestry or where Harry came from. Harry waited for Tom to say something more, but he didn’t, he just continued to watch the stream of brightly dressed people with packages in their arms as if he hadn’t said anything at all.

Harry gave a frown of annoyance, sometimes Tom could be a real pain. He either spoke too much about things that weren’t important or he spoke too little about things that were. He would always talk about really confusing things that Harry didn’t even half-way understand for what seemed like hours but then when Harry asked a single question, like when the wizards would come, what were they like, where had Tom lived when he was human, had he liked being a wizard, he’d get a sentence. Dudley could have given him more!

Still pressing Tom when he didn’t want to talk led to feelings of doom, or at the very least extremely scary glaring from dream-Tom. Tom had the sort of glare that made it seem like you weren’t looking at eyes, but something else, windows to the notebook world where no reality existed but Tom and all that energy and thought was focused only upon you. When Tom glared Harry could remember that he wasn’t human. 

“We should visit the real Diagon Alley!” Harry exclaimed, distracting himself abruptly, “You haven’t seen it for a while, too, right? It’d be really exciting, and fun too, just think about it Tom! You, me, and magic all day!”

Suddenly Tom’s mood swings were forgotten as the idea took hold and sprouted in Harry’s mind, he could see it, his day in Diagon Alley where the colors didn’t look too bright and everything smelled of magic and wizards and the future he would have in three years.

Tom turned his attention from the crowd to Harry with a considering look, “I suppose we could, though I’d prefer to teach you a little more magic before we do. An eight year old boy running frantically through the streets by himself might draw a little too much attention for my taste.”

Harry felt he should be insulted but was too used to Tom to say anything, “Come on! I know you want to, too! You hate school, and you hate the Dursleys, and this would be way more exciting.”

Tom grimaced slightly, “Yes, but that’s the trouble you see. People may be blind, deaf, and dumb but they are not completely incompetent. If anything I’m sure the Dursley’s would miss their gardener if we were simply to disappear for a day. If you want to be able to do something to this effect you must learn to make yourself invisible.”

Harry frowned, he’d been practicing every day, and he was very good at floating things now and lighting things on fire or making them glow. He’d even progressed to the point where he could summon items he was thinking about or wanted, but invisibility wasn’t on that list.

“Invisible?” Harry asked somewhat dubious, “They’d still notice me if I’m not there.”

“Not invisibility by sight but by mind Harry, although the former is possible.” Tom explained, “You need to become unnoticed, so that they are indifferent to your presence, you need for them to assume you are there even when you are not.”

Harry grimaced slightly, he’d never done something that extreme, it hadn’t even occurred to him that it was possible. It seemed more subtle than causing a ball to float or a spark to ignite and subtlety usually meant difficult. There was a wordless burning in magic that rushed through his fingertips, to actually cause it to pause and direct it to a very specific task sounded very hard. But he wanted this place, he wanted this place more than he had ever dared to want anything before, because it was so real and so very close.

“Don’t look so discouraged, magic takes years to master, it isn’t all floating glasses and glowing balls of light.” Tom said interrupting Harry’s negative thoughts with an almost chiding tone.

Harry felt his cheeks heat in embarrassment and tried to hide it by avoiding Tom’s too-piercing gaze, “I know that, it’s just… I’ve never done anything like that before.”

Tom just gave him a look, his eyes curiously flat and unamused as if Harry had said something particularly exasperating or dimwitted. And even though it wasn’t quite glaring it still wasn’t like any other expression

So Harry ducked his head in embarrassment, blood heating his cheeks, before saying, “Alright, I guess I’ll try it.”

Around them the memory began to fade as Tom’s attention wandered and some new landscape bled through to replace the cluttered shops and colorful people and Diagon Alley slowly but surely faded from view as if it had never existed in the first place.

“Very good.”

* * *

Sitting in a forgotten corner of the playground a young child with dark hair and ill-fitting clothing slowly but surely made his way through a rather daunting pile of books depicting the events of the twentieth century. He ignored the occasional glances that were thrown his way and the whisperings that followed, dark green eyes dutifully following the lines of text.

This was an illusion, because the boy wasn’t sitting there reading that book, but rather something else was. Using the boy’s eyes as puppets it stared through at text and thought on communism, propaganda, and the phrase “I am death destroyer of worlds.” He wore those pale twig like fingers and the dark unruly hair as the boy himself wore the oversized gray clothing forgotten by his cousin, it fit but only in the literal sense.

People saw his borrowed clothes but they did not observe them, because that boy had always been off, he had always been wrong. They saw Harry Potter and yet they could not see him, them, or the differences between them. They could only see the wrongness.

Tom Riddle did not change these perceptions; he did not manipulate this image, because he had never needed to. Even as a human he had let them see, let them in close so that they could stare into the whites of his eyes, and had watched as they did nothing or as close to nothing as they could manage. They were always so proud, as if they had discovered some great secret of his to know that he was wrong, off, different, and yet whenever they stood before him sneering and gloating and pointing out the obvious there was fear sneaking behind their eyes as they thought desperately to themselves, “What now? You have caught the devil, very well, but can you ever hope to hold him?”

Dudley Dursley was very aware of the fact that his cousin was a freak, not only because his parents told him this was true, but also because he wasn’t blind. (Tom applauded him silently for this act of deduction.)  Dudley was proud of his own powers of observation and reminded Harry that he knew his secret on a daily basis, an event which Harry found heartrending and Tom found exasperating. Still, Dudley had noticed something new, Harry was different. Harry was not the same Harry he had been only a little over a month ago. Tom knew that Dudley did not have the words for these changes, because they weren’t quite observable, he was still quiet, still a silent shadow against the wall, still starving for both food and attention. It was in the shadows of his eyes, the way he held himself as he observed the world around him, and though Dudley didn’t know how to point out these changes he saw them and he knew that he didn’t like them.

Tom was thus rather unsurprised when he found Dudley approaching his corner with child-like glee as he prepared himself to pummel his smaller cousin into submission. Oh Dudley, Tom thought to himself in a rather amused tone, if only the world were simple enough to play by a barbarian’s rules.

“Hey freak!” Dudley called as he made his way over followed closely by his skinny little friend Peirs and some other nameless lackey, “What you reading those books for, cause a freak doesn’t have any friends!”

Tom sighed and reluctantly closed his book, he could of course mend it if Dudley did something stupid but it was so much easier to just avoid that altogether. “Hello Dudley, lovely afternoon isn’t it?”

Dudley sneered, if he was disconcerted by small talk and the blatant lack of fear he didn’t let it show. Tom allowed Harry’s features to settle into a patient expression that awaited some form of response from Dudley. Dudley made his way until he was standing directly in front of the seated Harry, leering down at him with all the mass of rather overweight little boy.

“Today isn’t your lucky day, freak. You want to know why?” Dudley asked cracking his knuckles menacingly.

“Enlighten me.” Tom responded drily.

“Cause I want to see how fast a freak can run.” Dudley said proudly, and looked at Piers for affirmation, “I want a Harry Hunt!”

It was strange how that last word echoed in Harry’s mind. Even when Harry himself was not consciously present, pushed aside and dreaming of darkness as Tom stole his hands and eyes, his mind flickered in awareness at the word and like the deer tensed in order to prepare to run from the bloodstained hounds. (Tom ground the awareness out beneath his heel and watched as the primal images coursing through Harry faded into the background of thought.)

Tom gave Dudley a considering look before picking up his book and flipping back to the page he had been on before his approach, “I’m afraid, Dudley, that your plans to see me run like a little piggy all the way home will have to wait. You see, I’m learning how to destroy the world, and it’s really quite fascinating.”

Harry’s lips twitched slightly, almost smiling, at the will of the puppet master hiding behind his green eyes. Perhaps in that moment Dudley saw that his cousin was not his cousin at all, that his cousin wasn’t staring at him in that moment, and that he had somehow drifted from reality to some other less tangible existence. Tom wasn’t looking at him closely enough to see, Dudley was there, rather like an obnoxious and inconvenient prop that was standing in his view of the light his only purpose in life as an obstacle in the path of his betters. Tom looked through Harry’s eyes past Dudley and the playground to this brave new world that had come into existence during his absence.

“You see, it’s very strange for me, for a very long time I thought power was a thought-out thing a long treacherous road comprised of blood sweat and tears. This is the power you think of when you picture Hitler, Napoleon, Lenin, Stalin and others as well. It’s not power you are born to but rather that which takes years to accumulate and once you have it, well, there’s nothing quite like it. Of course there’s also the people who are born into wealth and power, Caligula, Nero, and others who also have rather limitless power but even though they managed to destroy their cities it just doesn’t seem as satisfying to me when the power is just handed to you by the idiot mob. It seems so boring if you don’t have to work for it. Until recently this was the only power I recognized within the universe, this was all there was for us, perhaps it was the only true law of nature there was. However, I was wrong, because there is another type of power.” Here Tom paused slightly as within the notebook his thoughts reflected themselves against the abyss even as he looked out of Harry’s eyes.  

“There is a divine power, the power of the instant, of rapid unpredictable change. Of a city, a flash of light, and then the shadows of thousands of souls trapped against a wall within the blink of an eye. It does not corrupt, but it is absolute and more terrible than anything conceivable by the minds of men. That, is what it means to be a god.” Tom finished with a slow small smile, “Do you understand, Dudley?”

Dudley, clearly did not. He stared at Tom-within-Harry, blinking for a few moments, his grin dropped for a frown and fear clouding his eyes for an instant as he took in the boy who was no longer even looking him in the eye but rather casually flicking his way through the pages. The fear, if only for an instant, rolled off of the larger boy in cascading waves as his fight or flight instinct settled into his blood.

The moment passed, Dudley tore Harry’s glasses from Tom’s face and stomped on them shattering both lenses with one foot. He then punched the younger boy in the face knocking him flat onto his back so that all Tom could see was a grey life-less sky.

“Freak’s not even worth the time.” Tom heard in the background and then several disgruntled sets of footsteps and Tom was alone once again.

Distantly Tom noticed that Harry’s nose was bleeding, with a slight amount of effort Tom used a small portion of Harry’s magic to reduce the swelling and stop the bleeding. He let it run through Harry’s body without moving, still lying on the ground staring at the sky.

He brought himself up slowly and stared after Dudley Dursley’s retreating figure slowly unknowingly repeating the steps his predecessors had taken all those years ago in an orphanage in London, “No Dudley,” Tom within Harry said slowly as he rose to his feet, “I don’t think you understand at all.”


	4. Chapter 4

Harry was happy.

It sounded so easy, happy, like something just within reach. He pictured yellow butterflies, floating about contentedly to stop every once in a while upon red flowers. He’d look at them not think anything until he realized that that if it weren’t for the flowers they would never have visited at all.

He’d never been happy before. He’d thought he had been, in little moments. Outside in the garden on a nice day and his first day of school when the other students had smiled at him (really smiled) before they had realized how… just how different he was. Those were only flashes though, as if he had just caught a glimpse of yellow wings, and then they were gone. And afterward when the clouds rolled in, and when the smiles faded as they always did he was left with a clawing horrid emptiness inside of him; the abyss, Tom’s abyss.

Nothing had really changed; he still lived in the cupboard beneath the stairs, Dudley and his gang still chased him with sticks at school, and every once in a while he was left to wonder if the Dursley’s really meant to starve him. On the surface he was the same Harry Potter he always had been, but Harry had learned something, something he had never thought before. The surface was only what you saw, but that didn’t make it real.

Reality was notebooks who dreamed of being men, worlds that changed with a thought or a whisper, and magic that drew light and fire from fingertips. That was where the flowers grew, that was where the butterflies lived, underneath what caught the eye.

It was Harry’s own secret world, hidden from everyone else even when they stared straight at it. Even from the Dursleys who always were quick to point out any hint of freakishness, even they glanced over and missed the tell-tale signs of magic.

Of course they were happy with the real world and Harry wasn’t.

His eyes would open and he’d stare at the blurred ceiling and think of what a gray day he’d have awaiting him. First he would serve breakfast to the Dursleys, then he would go to school where his teachers would eye him suspiciously and everyone else would snicker and point and whisper, and then he’d return back to the Dursleys to start again. This was the best he could hope for, this was his world.

And yet, in spite of that, he was happy.

Because even during the day there were glimpses, there was still magic, and there was still Tom.

Harry was sitting cross-legged on one of the play structures during recess, above him the clouds were imitating his dreams and the first few snowflakes of the year were readying themselves for descent. Around him magic twisted itself into a thin fence that separated him from the outside world and in his hands colored light swirled into shapes and illusions. He had closed his eyes but even so he could still see the light in his hands, could still recognize its shape and colors, and almost without noticing he was smiling.

He loved the feeling of magic, he loved to weave it through the air around him, to let it bleed into the universe and take the form of his thoughts. He tried to do this, just sitting and letting the magic go, a couple times a day.

He supposed he should be working on invisibility. It had been a while since Tom had given him that task in the fake Diagon Alley. Just like he’d thought there it’d been way more difficult than making balls of light appear or floating objects. He’d progressed a little; he’d been able to draw people’s eyes away from him, to make himself unnoticeable, but he was far from reaching any sort of goal. He now set up this barrier every time he worked so that he could practice out in the open.

Today though he just wanted to sit and be. It was important, Harry realized recently, to just be yourself if only for a little bit of time; because sometimes, if you weren’t careful, you could lose yourself completely.

There were moments, when the magic curled itself in his open fingers, that he lost his name and became nothing and everything. He descended into something else, something other. His thoughts, Harry’s thoughts, moved through him until they too left him and he was left with clarity that tasted like magic and light.

There were times when Harry wasn’t Harry anymore. He continued to move, to breathe, to read, and even to some extent to think but even so he was elsewhere, somewhere far from these actions, watching them each in turn with a strange sense of detachment.

The first time he had returned from one of these states he was terrified. He breathed in and out rapidly, staring in a daze at his surroundings. A rush of words streamed through his head, everything he knew about himself, reminding himself of who he was and who he wasn’t. I am Harry James Potter, I live in a cupboard beneath the stairs in my uncle’s house, my parents are dead, my relatives hate me, I have only one friend and he isn’t human, I am different, I have magic, I am different, I am different, I am a freak.

He was sitting on the floor in the bathroom having fallen down upon his return to being himself. Dimly he knew that class would be starting again soon and he would be late if he sat here any longer but somehow he couldn’t convince his legs to move.

He was breathing rapidly, the air stale on his tongue, and his eyes darting everywhere as they stumbled and attempted to focus on his surroundings. Blood was pounding in his ears drowning out the silence even while his thoughts screamed.

Eventually he had risen to his feet and returned silently to the classroom where he found his seat. He felt Tom in his head, very present and yet somewhat tired, almost drained but content. How, Harry asked himself as he sat there his hands shaking, can he be so content when the world was falling apart?

That was the first time. It happened with increasing frequency until he could expect at least one instance per day. He was never quite sure where he went when he wasn’t in his own head, he always came back, but he could never remember quite where he had been.

Before he would have been terrified, he was the only thing he had after all, without Harry he had nothing. Now though, he had more than just himself, he had Tom and he had magic and in the end wasn’t that worth more than Harry had ever been? If that was the price of magic, if that was the price of Tom, was he willing to pay it?

He wasn’t always sure, it still frightened him when he disappeared, but each time he thought about it he remembered what life was like before. He’d never been happy before, had never even understood the concept of happiness. He had never had any reason to expect anything from life, to look beyond life with the Dursleys, school, or anything else. It had taken Tom, Tom and magic, to show him that there was a world beyond the cupboard beneath the stairs. 

Nothing was free, the Dursleys always said, especially for lazy no good freaks like him. Nothing was ever free, so he should have known that he’d pay something for this new life. (He never thought he had anything to pay with.)

He let the magic fade and opened his eyes looking at the gray landscape beneath him, the other students milling about with balls and jump ropes, Dudley in the corner with his friends shoving them playfully as his eyes searched the grounds for entertainment in the form of some smaller helpless thing, a few adults supervising with tired overworked eyes.

Without even having to ask Harry knew that Tom didn’t think much of Harry’s little corner of England. From the cupboard beneath the stairs to the schoolyard, Tom dismissed it all with flat contempt and moved his eyes on to the horizon beyond Harry’s world. If Harry had to give this up, a little time at school, a little time locked in the cupboard, he couldn’t quite bring himself to think it was a bad deal.

They asked for Harry but they never really looked for him, it didn’t matter to the Dursleys or anyone else that sometimes when they talked to him or ordered him about that Harry wasn’t even there. Invisible, Tom had said, maybe Harry was overthinking it after all. He already was invisible. It was like, he didn’t really know how to describe it, they looked only for the idea of him. They looked for a little boy, dark hair like feathers, old and worn glasses with bent silver frames, oversized clothing that once belonged to his cousin and they thought that if you put that all together you got Harry, even when you didn’t.

Tom had said that one manner of invisibility was for people to assume you were there even when you weren’t, and only when he had mastered that could they explore Diagon Alley. Perhaps he was closer than he had thought and that was worth a little missed time in itself, wasn’t it?

* * *

“Hello Dudley,”

He sensed the boy’s confusion and then awe as the words leaked through the abyss to where they would bleed onto white paper. It tasted familiar, but somewhat dull, flat, Harry’s emotions had burned that day not so long ago. However, for Harry, the notebook had been life itself the universe of possibilities opening itself up to him, for this other boy it was only a new and interesting toy.

Tom waited patiently beneath white pages for the boy’s response, he had been waiting for some time now, he realized. To entertain himself, or perhaps to indulge his increasing sense of nostalgia, Tom had recreated his old transfiguration classroom on the board a half forgotten proof from his seventh year, a scattering of notebooks and papers littered across desks, and faint daylight shining through the windows. It was almost dawn and a transformation was about to occur.

He was surprised that it hadn’t occurred to him until now, more than surprised even, he was disconcerted. He should have thought of this much sooner than he did and the delay was quite unlike him or at least unlike the Tom Riddle he used to be. He hadn’t wanted to consider that perhaps, in the transition from man to book, he had not only changed but he had also lost. Then again, he could also simply be out of practice, it had been fifty years of self-imposed purgatory after all.

He had given Dudley Dursley a piece of the notebook, and now watched to see if the seed took root.

The trick was that the notebook wasn’t really a notebook, it was the idea of a notebook. Perhaps, like Tom himself, it had once been something else but that day in his father’s house had changed it intrinsically. It had to always appear as a notebook, to put on a cheery façade so that no one might guess that it was in fact something entirely different. This meant a few alarming facts, the stitching would never fall out, and the notebook would never run out of pages. Perhaps, had he been less pragmatic, this might have given him pause and made him wonder just what he had created all those years ago; but that was for lesser beings. Harry’s hands were unused to delicate work, constantly used for weeding and cleaning, but they had taken to the task well enough. With care various pages were torn from the interior and then stitched into a newer, brighter, and more eye-catching binding. Nowhere on this new notebook was the name “Tom Marvolo Riddle” etched, nothing remained of himself save the pages which still contained a link to his soul.

An early Christmas gift from Harry, not even glanced at twice by Dudley Dursley. Why wasn’t he entitled to an early Christmas gift, after all? And thus, the trap had been set.  

_Hey, are you a talking notebook?_

Well, Tom thought as the thoughts circled above him like lazy vultures, I never expected this to be a profound conversation. Still, he would have appreciated something a little less anticlimactic. 

“Yes, evidently.” Tom said response tapping his fingers on the desk he was sitting by and waiting for the plan to unfold. No response seemed to be forthcoming, it seemed that Tom would be driving this particular conversation.

“So, Dudley, tell me about yourself. It’s been a while since I’ve been on the mortal plane, I hear it’s very exciting this time of year. Christmas and all that.”

Dudley wrote quite a bit after that, filling in Tom to the details of his life with casual disregard. Far easier than even Harry, a neglected boy so desperate for attention that he would sell his soul for a bit of affection. The cause of this was not that Dudley was more chatty or even more trusting it was that he didn’t recognize sentience when he saw it. Harry had known instantly that the notebook could not only talk but that it could think and process Dudley had not grasped that concept. Yes, the notebook talked, but that did not make it any more real than a computer or a video game or any other machine.

I, Tom thought as Dudley listed what he expected for Christmas, am a program. A collection of memories and thoughts mashed together until it resembles something sapient.

The transfiguration classroom escaped him, dripping down the walls leaving behind only a curious blankness, the absence of thought. His good mood dissipated, perhaps, he thought to himself, this is why I waited until now. Across from him an image of Harry appeared staring at him with blank eyes, the boy sat cross legged in worn oversized clothing, his glasses were curiously absent and yet he seemed to accuse and see all the same even when blind.

It was strange, Harry’s acceptance of his possession. Tom hadn’t realized at first that Harry had noticed, even when he had stolen the body during the day. Harry was aware though, he was extremely aware, but he chose to do nothing. There was no mention of the instances between them, not even hidden behind other words like wolves in the guise of sheep, they were brushed aside into the darkest corner of Harry’s mind where they remained untouched. His terror was palpable and coursed through his thoughts after these episodes would end but they did not rule him. His magic would rage like a quiet storm beneath his fingertips but it would never move to strike out against Tom. He would simply stand, shaking and breathing heavily, and curl the magic back within before restarting his day where it had left off.

The image of Harry smiled a helpless resigned smile and tilted his head to catch a better view of Dudley’s torrent of thoughts still ricocheting overhead as they crashed into one another. “I suppose I should thank you, Tom.”

Tom started, not expecting him to speak. He had forgotten, or perhaps not acknowledged, that there was a piece of Harry within this notebook as well and that there were times when they both resided within its walls.

“You know what I’ve been doing.” Tom stated, because he was certain that Harry did, deep within the recesses of his consciousness where the wild magic dwelled Harry knew exactly who was responsible for his lost time.

Harry nodded slightly in acknowledgement but his smile did not dim, “I’ve never had friends, Tom. Friends… give things to one another.” Here the boy paused looking away from Dudley’s thoughts and back to Tom, “I think I should be upset, anyone else would be, but… I understand. I’ve never had anything before, not even me, so I know that sometimes you just need something even if it’s for a little bit.”

“A little bit,” Tom said wryly as he approached the visage of the boy, “Of course, for you it is only a little bit. If I succeed with your cousin here…”

The rest was left unsaid. It was not much of Harry in this instance, the real physical conscious Harry was trapped in his cupboard as usual with the main notebook, dozing quietly after having practiced magic for an hour his mind roaming elsewhere. This was the Harry that rested beneath the pleasantries, the mirror image of Tom himself, the one who looked at his relatives and saw objects placed in his path by the indifferent universe. This Harry saw Dudley’s fate quite clearly and encouraged it with a passive smile, one obstacle removed for him by sheer inaction.

“You will succeed, you always have.”  Harry said his attention turning back to Tom, “As for the consequences, I understand.”

“Do you really?” Tom asked the interior of the notebook darkening for a moment transforming itself into the orphanage, “I may not the most qualified to talk but perhaps you are taking this a bit too lightly.”

“If I was upset would it stop you?” The boy asked abruptly giving Tom a knowing glance, of course the answer was no but it was left unspoken, “So why should it bother me then?”

“We aren’t as different as you think.” Harry said still staring at Tom with magic in his eyes, “Of course you’ve had that thought too, but really Tom we aren’t as different as you’d like to think.”

Suddenly there was a rabbit hanging from the rafters, no longer swinging but simply hanging, as if it had always been there. Harry nudged it with a finger and there it went, the dread pendulum, back and forth its long bleeding shadow trailing dutifully beneath. There was no expression on the other boys face, no grin, no disapproval, just the same resigned acceptance that he wore for every facet of the world.

“This is the way the world works. I think we both know that.”

Dudley’s thoughts, like silent snowflakes, fell from overhead at a dizzying rate obscuring anything Tom might say in response. He stood and watched the image of that familiar boy and the bleeding hanging rabbit.

* * *

There was something else in that place that wasn’t Harry. He stood in the stillness, dragging his sight painfully away from his body (studying again, why did it always study so much, what was it missing?) into the emptiness beyond him. It was hard to see anything beyond his body, it was as if the world was covered in a fog, even focusing on himself during these times was difficult to say the least. Still, he wanted to keep an eye on what Harry did without him, or the not-Harry really. He’d been watching for a while now, but he hadn’t seemed to make a move, to do anything other than read text books that Harry couldn’t understand.

They were on everything and nothing, everything Harry had ever heard of the not-Harry had reached out for, and more. (He could hear Tom in his mind, the same words he always said after the never-ending sessions of questions on wizards, “Such insatiable curiosity.” And then a small smile before he turned away and talked about other things.) There was something familiar about the movements too, the way he tilted his head, his careful hand gestures, his words, it struck Harry every time he watched this imposter a name always on the tip of his tongue but then it was gone.

He didn’t seem too concerned with anything around him either, the holidays passed him by in a blur, unconcerned with the decorations or the spirit of the season he didn’t even bother to look up from his steadily growing pile of books. Neither was Harry himself for that matter. Not-Harry really didn’t seem too concerned about anything, rarely talking to anyone unless they spoke to him, and even then he always answered like he was Harry. Like nothing was different and that he hadn’t taken Harry’s place.

Harry felt he could leave it alone long enough to turn his back and focus on whatever else was there with him. There was something else out there, Harry knew it, he could feel it even if he couldn’t see it (hadn’t dared look before). “I am not afraid.” He said to himself as his body faded from his vision, he wasn’t sure if anyone heard him, if even Tom heard him, but he said it none the less.

He found himself looking at nothing. Tom had never shown him the abyss directly and made no mention that he ever planned to. Harry had asked only once, casually, because Tom had always mentioned it and he felt he should know what it looked like at the very least. Although Tom didn’t respond Harry did feel that in a way Tom did show him what it looked like, all Harry had to do was look in his eyes and see the emptiness staring back. Harry never asked again and yet here he was, staring into the abyss with the abyss staring back.  

It didn’t have a shape or a form, but then again he wasn’t sure that he did either. It was a presence, an almost-but-not-quite human thing lurking in obscurity. What struck him the most was that it had no face, why he had expected one, or been looking for one he didn’t know but this realization shocked him and made him uneasy. If it had a face, if there was something to look at, maybe he could have told himself that he understood what it was. But it didn’t, so there was going to be no fooling himself today.

He wondered if he should say something to it, do something, anything. He couldn’t tell if it was aware of him or not, it just sat and lurked, as if waiting for something although what it was waiting for Harry had no idea. Suddenly he wished Tom was with him, standing right next to him in this fog with either his confident slight smile or his strange sober frown. Tom wasn’t here though, Tom was with the not-Harry or in the notebook, somewhere away from here.

“I am not afraid.” Harry repeated to himself once again.

The thing shifted. Harry stepped back, or at least what he thought was backward, he moved away from the thing which was rising from its position so that Harry had the clear idea that it was looking him in the face. It had no eyes.

“I know you’re there!” He shouted at it, but of course it knew that as well. It didn’t seem to react, just watched him with cool regard. Harry didn’t like this thing, whatever it was, he didn’t like it at all. It was here though and he knew that if he ignored it that it wouldn’t just go away, it’d always be there even when he wasn’t looking for it, lurking in the corner.

It just watched.

He wondered what he should do now, he didn’t want to get closer, didn’t want it to get closer either. He wanted to go back to be Harry again, to be sitting there staring blankly at books he hadn’t picked out and didn’t understand, he didn’t want to confront whatever this thing was. With great effort of will he turned himself back to face the not-Harry, now sitting by himself in the playground reading a book whose title Harry couldn’t even pronounce. Harry focused on his body, moving himself closer to it, and finally back in it. His head was on fire, he could feel himself stiffen or rather his body stiffen as they weren’t quite the same yet.

“Get out.”

Harry opened his eyes, closed the book, and stared out at the oblivious masses while his hands shook.

Distantly he heard Tom’s voice in his head, _Harry, what the hell…_

_I couldn’t do it, Tom, I couldn’t look at it._ Harry thought, he didn’t wait for Tom’s response but stood slowly making sure his legs still worked, _It’s not just me out there, so I couldn’t do it._

There were prices and then there were prices, he wouldn’t pay this one. Even as he thought that though he felt  it just outside of himself, looking in, without eyes even to see him.


	5. Chapter 5

Harry looked tired, even in dream form there was a pale and exhausted cast to his young features. He had abandoned his glasses, forsaking realism, and stood staring into the horizon with a grim expression. He stood in bare feet and stained oversized clothing but somehow it seemed less ill-fitting in this setting, the rumpled edges brought out his jagged features, leaving him to look alien as if he had merely assumed the features of a human for convenience but hadn’t bothered to truly make it fit.

They were standing in a flat wasteland, snow drifting slowly overhead, leaving the ground bitter and frozen. The scenes they had created had often been fantastic, otherworldly, but they had never had that same taste of isolation that this one carried. Though it had only been them in those worlds they lacked this desolation, the feeling as if sentience had been a jarring mistake, and that they themselves did not belong.

It was Tom who spoke, “Something happened today.” He noted in a tone that expressed only an observation and no true emotions, Harry did not turn, did not move his eyes from that great expanse or even acknowledge Tom’s existence. Tom continued even though he knew the answer to his next question, “Are you alright, Harry?”

Harry turned slowly to face Tom his eyes large and scared and finally said, “It looks empty doesn’t it?”

Tom turned to the horizon, to the pale eye that served as this world’s sun, he watched for the way the earth bled into the sky, both pale shadows of each other, neither giving any weight or sense of reality.

“It isn’t.” Harry said Tom turned his head back in time to catch that grim expression turn into a twisted form of a smile, “It only looks empty, but then most things only ‘look’ like something. Isn’t that right, Tom?”

Tom said nothing. His eyes narrowed as he took in the form of the dark haired boy, only eight, and yet somehow drastically older at the same time. The past few months had refined Harry, had taken features that Tom had only seen the edge of and whittled away at the surface until they were glaring. Harry had always been perceptive and rather philosophical for a young boy but it was only now that Tom admitted the degree to which he saw these attributes. In a corner of the notebook hidden from Harry Tom placed the young human Tom Riddle and Harry Potter into a room. Immediately the pair regarded each other, pale eyes dissecting, while green merely observed. In the end it was only the Harry in the room that stood and addressed the walls and ceiling announcing in confidence, “I am a figment.”

The notebook was layers, layers upon unseen layers, and Tom stood as if standing on the surface of a clear lake looking down through each knowing even as he looked that it stretched above and below him in infinite directions a red glow following as it expanded outwards. In one layer, neither near the top nor the bottom, the consciousness of Harry Potter regarded the teenage Tom Riddle with a sad terrified smile in the wasteland that existed on the edges of time.

“What is it, Harry, that we’re looking for here?” Tom asked.

Harry shrugged in a jerking manner as if to force the movement, “I don’t know.” 

“You don’t know.”

“I don’t think it has a name.” Harry clarified softly and added, “It certainly doesn’t have a face.”

Tom considered for a moment that Harry might be referring to him, stealing his body during waking hours, a thing he knew that Harry was aware of but this idea was quickly cast aside. Whenever he stepped back from Harry’s hands and into his own world of the notebook it had always seemed, at least for a second, that Harry knew exactly who had taken his body for a joy ride. This was different, something had occurred while Tom was possessing Harry, something behind his back and Harry had no idea what it was. For that matter neither did Tom. He had never considered before where exactly it was that Harry went when Tom possessed him. He had always assumed that Harry went deeper into his own mind, became trapped in subconscious only to emerge when Tom was finished, it never occurred to Tom that Harry went anywhere at all.

Once again Tom wondered if he had lost something in becoming a notebook, these assumptions unconsciously made bothered him, but then again he had made many assumptions when he was human as well. He just hadn’t been around to see the results of his conjectures. Self-reflection hadn’t become a strong suit until he had trapped himself in the notebook; only then had he thought on what it meant to be Tom Riddle. Now it seemed like it was all he was capable of.

The world shifted, blurred forcibly out, into something more pleasant by Harry’s wish. A recreation of Tom’s Diagon Alley soon formed, it was not as exact, the people had been left out and many more of the shops were blurred, but it retained the general essence of the place.

“I think I’m ready, to visit Diagon Alley I mean.” Harry said, a small smile on his face, “I already do that invisible thing you talked about all the time, without magic even, so how hard can it be with it?”

Looking down at the boy who was now smiling Tom felt again that sliver of foreboding seeping through his chest. Harry wasn’t lying and Tom didn’t doubt his abilities either, he was ready, not only to cast disillusionment, notice-me-not wards, but a complete illusion all without a wand. Tom Riddle had been a wandless prodigy a child so terrifying in his abilities that before a word was even spoken Dumbledore had decided he must be contained. Yet even then Tom Riddle had never been capable of that magnitude of an illusion, he could suggest, he could coerce, but he could not alter the perception of reality on that level.

True, Harry had Tom as a mentor, a man who was very gifted in both the practice of magic and the theory behind it but that should not have been enough. In truth Tom hadn’t expected Harry to reach beyond summoning light, moving objects, or perhaps even mental coercion until he gained a wand. It seemed, however, that he was wrong.

“Yes,” Tom distantly after a brief period of thought, “I think you’re right.”

Harry grinned, all hints of the beginning of the dream wiped from his features, and he appeared for all the world like any other child during the holidays. He grabbed Tom’s hands violently in his own, green eyes beaming, and began to plan excitedly, “Great! We’ll do a practice round, just to see if it works you know, and then afterwards we can go into London! I can’t wait to see it, in real life I mean!”

Somehow Harry had made this place more cheerful, saturated the colors, made the slanting walls a bit more jovial, and gave the windows a clear sparkle. He dragged Tom through familiar and yet unfamiliar streets, down the rabbit hole, and pointed to shops eagerly asking what each one was until they found themselves outside Ollivanders.

They watched the door in silence, Harry’s smile dimming slightly and the street growing more real as shadows reasserted themselves, “I wish that I could get my wand now, you know.”

He turned to Tom with a pitiful quirk of the lips, as if he was the butt of the universe’s joke and knew it, and continued, “It’s almost worse knowing and then not being able to do anything about it. Still, I’m glad, I’m very glad I met you.”

Tom regarded Harry Potter, poverty-stricken muggle born prodigy that he was, most likely the bastard son of some Potter cast aside when he proved to be inconvenient. Wearing hair like feathers and a bright and untried smile, gripping Tom’s hands with his own pale and calloused fingers as his magic crackled like a thunderstorm. It could have been any child, his key to the mortal plane, any child at all and yet somehow Tom did not regret meeting this particular one.

Tom smiled and to his surprise it was not false or strained at the edges, “I am too, Harry.”

Harry grinned back and once again the world was filled with light. The layers beneath their feet became transparent once again for Tom allowing him to peer through to the heart of the Notebook where his very soul lay in wait, through it he reviewed his own memories even as Harry forcefully moved them away from the reminder of his own helplessness. Years of gray waiting at the orphanage overlapped until they contained only the same image of his own pale burning eyes but he wasn’t looking for that, he looked further, closer to himself and found that moment of being flung from Harry’s mind. That burning sensation and the brief moment he looked back and saw not Harry’s overwhelming fear and fury but something else, a shadow of something he had once known very dearly but could no longer remember.

His mind flashed, a thunderstorm rolling behind this idyllic image of Diagon Alley, to that moment in his father’s house wand in hand when the green light had briefly spread before him like rays of sunlight stolen from the leaves. He had seen something then, reflected in his father’s eyes, in the windows, in the wine glass left unattended on the coffee table something illuminated for an instance in that rolling light. Something dreadfully familiar that he could not name.

“Tom?” Harry asked, looking back to him with a concerned expression, his own worries showing partly behind his glass-less eyes.

“Sorry, I was distracted for a moment.” Tom said with a wave of his hand.

Harry smiled in relief at Tom’s casual answer, “You think too much,” he said cheerfully, “But it’s good, I like it.”

Pretending to be affronted Tom replied, “Of course you would like it, without me who would lecture you on the true nature of the universe and the warped representation of reality?”

And so Harry laughed and continued to pull Tom through shifting realities of half remembered fantasies and illusions without concern or regard for how they changed everything the touched and how the visions behind them quickly vanished when no one was looking.

* * *

Ironically the key to Dudley Dursley’s heart was Harry Potter.

They hadn’t broached the topic of Harry for quite some time. First Dudley had to write about himself, then about his parents, then about school, and then finally his freak of a cousin.

Tom would sit within the notebook wondering how it was so difficult to pretend enthusiasm when he didn’t even have to look Dudley in the face. He used to be very good at this sort of thing but he figured he was just out of practice. Years without Slughorn had dulled his ability to hide abject boredom behind a pleasant cheerful smile, and he had been so good at it too. He remembered the mantra in his head, this will be useful someday, as he would sit there in those God awful parties. How had he managed it? Still, he took every word Dudley wrote and catalogued it for later reference, you never knew what was going to be important later.  

Dudley wasn’t sure why Harry was a freak. He knew Harry was poor, that he was underfed, that his parents were dead, and that Dudley’s own parents hated him. Dudley freely admitted, in his own eight year old manner, that Harry was convenient. It was easy to torment Harry, fun even, because he was a freak who lived under the cupboard like a dog.

Dudley didn’t even really notice Harry until Harry started getting smart. Dudley relayed his own observations of Harry in school. He knew that Harry hadn’t cheated, hadn’t even had help at all, but somehow Harry turned out to be a lot better at school than Dudley was. Harry was now this thing called smart, this thing that Dudley apparently wasn’t. His parents had screamed at Harry for it, made him hide it, but Dudley knew it was still there. Harry, who wore Dudley’s own ruined clothing, had somehow got something Dudley couldn’t.

Ever since then Harry had seemed almost untouchable because now he had smart and no matter how Dudley tried he couldn’t take it away from him. Trying to beat it out of him almost made it seem worse, because Harry would look at him, and he’d look so much older than Dudley. Dudley didn’t know how to get rid of it, how to turn Harry back into the freak again, and he hated it.

It was then that Tom decided lying to Dudley would get him nowhere. It was all very well and good to indulge the fat bastard but it seemed that to get genuine emotions he’d have to stop humoring. He’d never spoken the truth before to get what he wanted, it was strangely relaxing.

So one day he told Dudley that Harry sounded very interesting and not like a freak at all.

The thoughts had buzzed then.

Dudley didn’t necessarily like Tom, certainly he didn’t consider Tom’s feelings, but it was as if one of his toys had openly said to him that it was more interested in Harry than him.

In that moment everything of Dudley’s self-worth had to be thrown into question. What if all things secretly viewed Harry as being superior and only told him that he was better? What if Harry had these other secret talents like smart that were hidden away somewhere unable to be reached by Dudley? What if Harry finally managed to move past him, to some place Dudley couldn’t reach? Where would Dudley be then?

Dudley did not quite possess the mental capacity to realize the implications of what had occurred. To even formulate these questions. Instead he felt jealous, resentful of his cousin, without even really knowing why. He just knew that he wanted Harry to hurt, more than when Dudley beat him up just for fun, he wanted him to really hurt.

At the rate the emotions were flying Dudley Dursley would be little more than a memory in a few weeks.

Tom wondered idly if he should intervene on Harry’s behalf, he had already played his role to try to warn Dudley from this path now would only bring on Dudley’s actions faster. Besides Tom doubted Dudley was capable of truly injuring Harry, perhaps before Tom and Harry had met, but not now. No matter how Dudley approached it Harry was a wizard, when pushed Harry would win without question.

Even then if Harry was still unwilling Tom could take over for him.

Perhaps Harry would even learn a lesson or two out of this, how blood means nothing, and how when you strike you must strike hard and fast. Harry needed to learn to see beyond his own sense of fatalism, that one had the option of fighting back, not just fighting back but winning.

It would be good for him.

* * *

Harry couldn’t pinpoint the day when Dudley began acting strangely he only knew that at some point Dudley had changed dramatically. Not like Harry, but rather Dudley had become something entirely different than Dudley. It was like something was walking around wearing a Dudley suit, a comical outfit that was far too large for its occupant, but that it wore it none the less.

As for Harry himself his own out of body experiences began to fade until they stopped altogether. He couldn’t say he missed them or that thing that existed outside of them and it was nice to know that he would be himself the whole day. He began to relax, without even knowing it, and spent more time with Tom and magic waiting more eagerly for his eleventh birthday to arrive.

The holidays approached and school was let out. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this, on the one hand school was better than the Dursleys but on the other it was still a cage. He could practice magic, he could read books and talk to Tom, but he couldn’t leave. School was a small taste of freedom, the freedom he’d finally have once he was eleven years old.

It was after they had come home that Harry noticed Dudley’s changes. Harry had expected, even as he had warded the back yard from prying eyes while practicing magic, Dudley to seek him out once he got bored of the television. However, it never happened, color-filled lights and rocks floated for hours without interruption. Eventually Harry had turned back to the house, wondering just how strong he had managed to make the invisible fence surrounding him, had he erased his existence from their minds altogether?

_Tom?_

Soon enough Harry felt Tom’s familiar presence in his thoughts, that smoky light that seemed to shimmer and dance, with blue eyes that burned pale and restless fingers that tapped against his knees. Somehow, even without a body, Harry could picture him in one so easily. Taking that tall dark-haired dream image and gifting it to Tom without even a conscious thought.

_You’re doing very well, Harry._ Tom commented softly, probably wondering if Harry was asking for input. Harry shook his head, even though he knew that Tom wasn’t standing next to him to see it.

_No, it’s not that, it’s probably nothing really._ He commented, as he did so he let the magic fade from the fence and from the air, back into his hands to be used at another time.

_Nothingness looks very different than this._ Tom said almost absently, Harry winced but he knew Tom wasn’t offended or trying to point anything out, he was just talking. It was just a comment, he wasn’t actually angry about Harry comparing something like this to the abyss. _Still,_ Tom continued not paying Harry any mind, _What is your particular brand of nothing?_

Harry reached the house and came in through the back door nodding slightly to a rumpled uncle Vernon who sat at the table. He had been outside to weed the lawn, and it had been weeded, just not by human hands. Harry had decided very early to put the magic to practical use as soon as he was able and the weeds had not been heavy to lift at all. Uncle Vernon grunted slightly at the sight of him, “Boy.” He said, whatever order meant to follow being left unmentioned. Harry walked past him and to the cupboard where he would be summoned once another chore needed to be done.

As he walked past the living room he caught sight of Dudley, he almost paused but had lived with the Dursleys too long to willingly seek out antagonism, still he looked at his cousin carefully. That was when he first caught sight of it, whatever had happened to Dudley. He was so still, the light of the television flickering over his features almost hauntingly, and he did not even turn his head at Harry’s footsteps.

_I think something’s wrong with Dudley._ Harry confided to Tom once in the relative safety of his cupboard, he drew his knees into himself and stared at the peeling paint on the walls wordlessly waiting for what Tom had to say.

Normally Tom dismissed Dudley right off but today he must have sensed something too, or else heard it in Harry’s tone, because he said nothing for a while clearly thinking. This almost worried Harry more, because a confident Tom was far more reassuring than one who had to sit and ponder over the situation.

_I don’t really know what it is._ Harry continued in Tom’s silence, _I can’t really tell you. Well, normally he would have gotten bored by now and come to chase me, or something, but he hasn’t done anything at all._

_Is this a bad thing?_ Tom asked drily, Harry could see his smile in the back of his head, that sharp almost Cheshire grin.

_Well, not necessarily, it’s just weird. It’s not like him._ Harry couldn’t say why it unsettled him, Tom was right, he should be happy his cousin was too distracted to try to beat him up.

_I can’t say I’ve paid your cousin too much mind, Harry. I will say this though, humans, even creatures as pitiful as he is, are not static. I am not arguing that he will undergo a profound metamorphosis and become something useful to society however he is entitled to his own limited growth._

Harry frowned and drew his knees in closer, _Are you saying that he’s just grown out of it or something?_

_Not necessarily._ Tom replied, _I’m saying he’s found himself some new hobbies._

Harry got what Tom was saying, really he did, but still there’d been something so wrong with that image.

_If it makes you feel better I’m sure by tomorrow Dudley will be back to his old routine of trying to paint you with bruises._

Harry couldn’t help but laugh a little at that, it was good to have someone to talk to about these types of things, _Thanks Tom._

He tried not to let it bother him but in odd moments it would, when he was thinking about magic or Diagon Alley it would sneak up on him like a creeping spider hanging on the wall and spinning webs. It wasn’t any particular thing, that’s what really bothered him, just small moments strung together.

He wouldn’t give it any real thought until they went to the park.

Harry had been brought along because of Mrs. Figg’s absence that day and so the Dursleys and Harry found themselves in the snow covered playground that was in the middle of Little Whinging. Harry sat on the creaking swings staring out at the street with dull eyes. His mouth was set in a grim line, it was on days like these where he had to remind himself that three years was nothing, he’d gone through three years before and that was without waiting for anything he could do it again.

He and Tom were settled in a comfortable silence, neither inclined to start a conversation at that moment. They were both too occupied by their own thoughts to think of anything worth saying to the other.

Out of the corner of his eye Harry saw Dudley. He still had that wrongness about him, that sense of being not Dudley that had only increased during break, but he was glaring at Harry with more feeling than he had done in a long time. Harry wondered if he had ever seen Dudley look at him like that, like he really resented Harry, hated him even. Harry couldn’t ever remember Dudley being nice to him, he’d always been mean, but he couldn’t remember being hated. Harry was a way to not be bored anymore, like a reliable toy that was always there to be pushed around, he wasn’t anything worth hating. 

The Dursleys were nowhere in sight it was only Dudley and Harry.

Harry’s hands tensed on the chains of the swings, “What do you want Dudley?” 

Dudley stood there fuming, not answering his question, only asking, “You’re a freak, right?”

Harry didn’t say anything in response; even though he felt his eyes harden beneath his glasses he didn’t say anything. It occurred to him, in one blinding surreal moment, that he could kill Dudley with a thought if he wanted to. Squeeze his heart a little too hard in his chest, stop it from moving, it wouldn’t take much. He shook the thought away and his muscles tensed preparing to run.

Dudley walked forward, standing over Harry now pushing him back with one hand, “Answer me dumb-head, you’re a freak, right?”

“Lay off Dudley.” Harry said knocking Dudley’s hand away.

“Lay off Dudley,” Dudley mimicked, “Like you’re whining to your dead mummy. You think you can sit on the swings, like a normal person?”

The push came harder this time, knocking Harry from the swing altogether until he was on the ground staring up at his cousin. Why was this happening? Why was he letting this happen? Because he was letting it happen, Dudley may be big and mean, but Harry had magic. Harry could kill Dudley with a thought, so why was this happening?

Harry sat up and began to back away from his cousin, turning and walking quickly towards some other section of the playground. Dudley followed behind, “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

“Go away Dudley!”

Tom was still silent in his head but his presence was heavier, like he was watching intently. Harry didn’t want to ask what he was thinking, wasn’t sure he wanted to know, he just kept walking his hands in his pockets to keep the magic from spilling out.

Dudley sped up.

Harry didn’t want to fight Dudley, he also didn’t want to run though, he just wanted to be allowed to sit in the park by himself for a few minutes. Dudley had never really hurt him, not too badly at least, he’d given him a black eye once but that was only one time. Mostly it was just a few bruises on the arms, that sort of thing.

“Where do you think you’re gonna run to freak? Your dead parents?”

Harry stopped walking.

Inside his head Tom spoke, _It will never stop unless you make it, Harry._

He turned and looked at Dudley. Almost out of breath from the brisk walk over, dressed in warm layers, looking at him with a triumphant expression for having cornered him with a few words. Suddenly it didn’t bother him so much, whatever was happening to Dudley, let it happen. If Dudley became some not Dudley thing that was fine, Harry didn’t care.

Harry flung Dudley back with a thought, without even moving his hands, once his cousin had landed Harry pinned him there and slowly stalked forward. He stopped when he was over Dudley’s head, looked down at him, and said in a cold voice that reminded him of Tom’s.

“Don’t ever talk about my parents.”

Dudley was looking at him in terror, like was some kind of monster from television, like he really was a freak. Harry backed away a step and released him, watched as Dudley floundered to his feet humiliated and scared, and made his way back to uncle Vernon and aunt Petunia where he would babble all about Harry’s funny business.

_He’ll try again._ Tom commented, Harry caught an image in his head, the gray orphanage and the leering faces of children inside.

_I don’t care._

Harry didn’t think about getting the belt or being locked in the cupboard, all the things that were now guaranteed to happen to him, he thought about Dudley and how wrong he seemed. He thought about Dudley being his cousin, his family, and about Tom who wasn’t related to him at all. He thought about that look in Dudley’s eyes, that wild fear, pointed at him.

_I just wish he’d leave me alone._

Tom didn’t say anything but Harry heard an echo of his thoughts, something not said out loud but rather seen in a glance, _This is what comes from relying on wishes._


	6. Chapter 6

It was a terrible whiteness.

It was the hideous unrealized potential of things, of all things, pulsing within itself like an erratic beating heart.

In the end he wasn’t sure that Dudley Dursley was even aware of him when he stole the boy’s soul.

It was not an Opera. As Mephistopheles Tom had made no clear bargain to despairing Doctor Faustus, had promised nothing in return for his fee and the good doctor, for his own part, had only signed the contract because he had mistook it for some more innocent form. It was a superficial relationship based upon misinterpreted implications and unsaid wishes that held no real weight.

They lacked the catharsis of true tragedy.

It was only a few days after Christmas when the first crack appeared in the stitching.

Tom had been with Harry that day in the cupboard, willing to suspend himself to keep the boy company on a day that meant nothing and everything, only a few stray hooks remained in Dudley Dursley’s mind there only for necessity. Harry hated Christmas because it reminded him of the parents he didn’t have. More so even than his birthday which was never really acknowledged by Harry or the Dursleys themselves, Christmas was about family, about love, and about hope for the future none of which Harry actually possessed.

With a small, sad sort of smile, Harry had made gifts for himself. Strings of make shift Christmas lights, formed from small drops of magic, hung from the cupboard’s bare ceiling all shades of light caught within each.  They danced, shifting in heavenly spheres like the stars themselves, burning as if they could forever.

Harry being in one of his more solemn and introspective moods Tom had taken it upon himself to start up a conversation.

He had never been chatty, most of his conversations were forced, falsified, and a testament to his acting abilities rather than any desire to speak his mind. Looking back he wondered if he had ever told anyone his true thoughts while remaining human, perhaps a glimmer to Dumbledore, in that first disastrous meeting before his wardrobe had been set on fire but beyond that he had never seen the need.

His isolation in the notebook had loosened his tongue slightly, or at least, it had in regards to Harry. Tom had nothing to say to Dudley and with him those cheery strained conversations that the charade of Tom Riddle perpetuated continued once again. He had found that he did want to speak, to share his view on deeper things, like magic and the universe at large. He enjoyed teaching, to see a spark of understanding in another’s eyes, to know that his knowledge would not be trapped with him forever in this shell he had created for himself. Perhaps it was simply that beyond Harry Potter he had never found a being capable of understanding.

He began by talking about time.

“I never realized how intricate time was until I took it from myself.” In the notebook he closed his eyes and allowed the illusion of time to pause, to become still life, a replica of his body painted in the wilderness.

In the cupboard Harry said nothing, merely listened, his chin on his knees as he turned his attention away from the Christmas morning he was missing.

“As a human things like weeks, days, years, holidays I took for granted because they seemed so obvious. Christmas seemed somehow more significant than any other day of the year, highlighted, and while I knew mentally that this was a contrived thing it is only now that I see it. Time is like light, comprised of particles and waves all in the same moment, where one can find a single instant, a photon if you will, but at the same time be forced to acknowledge as it moves past you with no real form to it at all. In this way time both exists and doesn’t exist in the same moment.”

Harry did respond then, through his thoughts words came dripping through to Tom, “So then, are you saying that Christmas, that this doesn’t really matter?”

Later, perhaps when he could see Harry face to face, he might tell him about a cat in a box that was alive and dead at the same time. That in life and in magic there is no true single form, everything is dualism, the one face and another in both instants. There is no such thing as duplicity because we are all infinite things at once.

“I’m saying that it means what you let it mean, Harry. Not only because Christmas is an arbitrary Christian tradition that celebrates the life of a carpenter who died two thousand years ago but because it is only a moment caught in the fourth dimension.”

Harry laughed, laughed in his cupboard as well, and tried to muffle it with his hands. He’d probably never heard anyone speak so frankly about faith before. Tom Riddle certainly hadn’t, not in the orphanage, Mrs. Cole had taken her protestant roots very seriously and demanded her children did the same. Harry, in his miserable and fairly atrocious childhood, had been spared that at least.

“Thanks Tom, for everything.” Harry didn’t say that it was the best Christmas he’d ever had, that in spite of the fact that he was locked in a cupboard with only his own magic and a voice in his head for company he had never received anything more.

In their own world of light of pressing walls and floating self-made stars Tom could only distantly feel the hurricane that was Dudley’s soul as his disappointment of receiving exactly what he had asked for overwhelmed the tenuous chords holding his existence together. The hooks Tom planted began to pull in earnest.

* * *

Harry disliked aunt Marge quite a bit, more so even than he disliked Dudley or uncle Vernon. He’d always felt like that, even when he hadn’t questioned what family meant in the end, aunt Marge had remained constant. She was a lot like uncle Vernon, her brother, only for her it wasn’t Grunnings but her dogs that commanded her attention. Her great jowls would move and brag about her dogs latest winnings as the dark creatures growled and stared at Harry as if looking at their next meal. Even aunt Petunia and to some extent Dudley, Harry felt, didn’t like aunt Marge.

Aunt Petunia would always get this look on her face before aunt Marge’s visits, a cold grimace usually only given when staring at Harry, and she would take a deep breath to prepare herself for the soon to be empty bottles of gin and the scratched hardwood floors from the dogs nails.

The end of Christmas meant the arrival of Marge Dursley and Harry was set to cleaning without further ado as aunt Petunia fretted over restocking the supply of alcohol and uncle Vernon prepared himself with cheer. Only Dudley seemed indifferent to the whole thing, sitting listlessly on the couch watching television. He’d been like that recently though, more often than usual, it was like Dudley wasn’t even really there anymore but was a shell of himself instead. He hadn’t even yelled at Harry when he came into vacuum the living room, drowning out the sounds of the television, just stared ahead to the grainy picture on the television.

For a horrifying moment Harry wondered if Dudley was dead. However just then Dudley had shifted, making himself more comfortable, still not saying a word to Harry.

Harry had left without saying a word taking the vacuum with him. He couldn’t say he expected better, not after the other day, but somehow that blank oblivious stare hurt more than Dudley’s fists ever could.

Now he was here, stowed safely out of the way in the kitchen helping aunt Petunia with the cooking, listening with half an ear to boisterous aunt Marge, uncle Vernon, and the new silent version of Dudley.

Tom was curiously absent in Harry’s mind, Harry could still feel him in his own mind, but his eyes and incredible focus were elsewhere leaving a distracted feeling in its place. Not that Harry blamed him, this all was fairly boring, on the best of days Tom tolerated the Dursleys and that was without Marge Dursley in their midst.

They talked a bit about Grunnings, dogs, and finally the conversation turned to something more relevant, the boys. Aunt Marge had made her opinion of both Harry and Dudley very clear since the very beginning, Harry was a no good son of a drunkard while Dudley was a sweet little boy, not much different than the Dursleys view of him just a little cruder in its presentation.

Dudley didn’t say a word.

With his head down, focusing on chopping vegetables and not making the mistake of looking one of aunt Marge’s dogs in the eye, he couldn’t see to the kitchen table where the large trio was sitting picking at hors d’oeurvres and so he wondered if Dudley was as pale as he had been that morning, if he was as blank looking.

The Dursleys had noticed something was a little off about Dudley too, however with the rush of the holidays they had passed it off as a slight illness, they weren’t really looking. Once things settled down, they said, they’d take Dudley to the doctor and see if anything was really the matter. Harry wasn’t sure why but he had the ominous feeling that it would be too late by then.

Maybe he was wrong though, maybe it was some weird fever, people did get sick sometimes. It wasn’t like Harry was an expert or anything, he was pretty sure he had been that pale before, maybe even that blank looking in bad moments.

Tom wasn’t paying enough attention to comment on Harry’s observations, his presence only a ghost on the walls of his head, and Harry felt the weight of his silence more than he would any words he could have said.

“Honestly Vernon, I don’t know why you took that little brat in in the first place.” Aunt Marge said in between mouthfuls of food, Harry’s knife did not stall in the cutting but his eyes did flick upwards so beyond the lenses of his glasses he could make out their faces.

Uncle Vernon grunted slightly and waved his hand, dismissing Harry’s existence and presence in the household, “A damn nuisance he is. He knows he has to earn his keep though, the minute he steps out of line and it’s off to the orphanage for him.”

“Hm,” Aunt Marge agreed without any real commitment, “You’d better watch that boy Vernon, he may be young and whipped into shape now but wait till he gets older and catches his eye on the booze and the girls, like his father.”

Harry had seen this play before but he hadn’t recognized it for what it was.

Harry used to just stand there, uselessly in a corner, a sharp pain in his chest and tears in his eyes at the thought of his dead parents who must have been more than the Dursleys said they were. He’d changed though, and now he looked past all the pain and instead listened to the quiet buzz of anger that was building in his skull. Tom would have something poetic to say about it, like how they were all reading off of some script they had written in their heads. It sounded good the first time but when you keep looping it over and over and over again it loses any real meaning.

James Potter the alcoholic, Lily Evans the stupid whore, and Harry Potter the delinquent no good son doomed before he could even read.

His heart used to stutter in his chest whenever they talked like this, his eyes would sting, and he’d want to scream blindly that it wasn’t and couldn’t be true. Now though he just stood and let the anger simmer in his skull and think that they may never learn that you shouldn’t disrespect the dead but that because they were incapable of learning it then it didn’t matter anyway. It just made them not really people, because people didn’t say the same things over and over again, people didn’t read scripts in their head. Tom was right, they were caricatures.

Suddenly Dudley stood away from the table, a small pale shadow of a child, his head twisted towards Harry slowly until he was looking at him with glassy dull eyes. For a moment he just stood there, like a puppet whose strings had been jerked and who was poised for action and then his strings were cut.

In the kitchen aunt Petunia dropped a plate, it the glass shattered against cold tiles, and she screamed at the sight of Dudley’s lifeless body sprawled on the floor.

* * *

_Tom?_  

* * *

In the moment before entering the notebook there had been two Tom Riddles, each staring back at the other, staring into twin blue eyes burning so terribly pale. For a moment he had been duality at the very base of the word, his father’s darkened house spinning away from him as reality dripped at the seams, for a moment he was two and then he was one.

It had been a flip of a coin, a single even chance between two equally likely outcomes, and yet it had been him who had descended into the notebook and the other who remained human. The divergence was nothing more than that, a toss of a coin, and it had given them such different destinies in the end.

For a moment Tom was both in the notebook and outside it all at once. He could feel Dudley Dursley being dragged in inch by screaming inch still unaware of the specifics of his situation but beginning to understand the peril of it. Amid the beeping of heart monitors, the dripping of the I.V., and his parents own terror stricken faces he was fading from them inch by inch while Tom stood a transparent shade unnoticed against the wall.

He looked as if he was merely dreaming and perhaps he was in a way, what else was the notebook but a dream, a memory of life. Petunia Dursley had taken his hand and was squeezing it, tears running down her face, muttering words of prayer to a God of her own imagining who might listen to her suffering over that of others. Behind her Vernon and Marge Dursley stood with grave faces, attempting to be pillars of strength, and yet the unnamable fear in their eyes. Harry Potter was nowhere to be seen.

In the Dursley home the Christmas decorations were still up.

Tom was staring at his hands instead, fascinated by their not-quite texture, the way they appeared like dim light on the walls of the room casting off a pale soft glow. In the glass door leading to the room he caught his reflection. It was barely visible at this point, as if trying to catch another reflection within a reflection, and yet there stood Tom Riddle. He stepped closer to the glass and placed his fingers against it, almost feeling the cool touch, the nerves still forming themselves beneath his fingertips.

He was still wearing his Hogwarts uniform; the dark robes, the green and silver tie, and even the prefect’s badge were all in place. The day he entered the notebook, the night he killed his father, he had been wearing black and yet here he was so resplendent. Somewhere, beyond his own conscious thought, he looked at himself and still saw the schoolboy.

In the glass his reflection’s lips twitched slightly, as if they found something slightly amusing, but could not quite bring themselves to laugh. It looked odd on this face that half commitment to an expression, he had always been so composed, especially in the uniform as if he was in a very demanding costume and that certain expectations rode with it.

The light was fading from his skin as his form took a more solid tone, with a wave of his hand he cast a notice me not ward around him, not that the Dursleys or the doctors would pay him mind anyway but it would do no good to appear suddenly in the room.

He looked back at his reflection taking it in full and realized that he was right it didn’t fit anymore. There was no reason for him to remain Tom Riddle in this world; he had known that from the beginning, his other had certainly known that from the beginning. That’s what the whole Voldemort thing had been about in the end, not being Tom Riddle. He had always hated his name, it had always sounded so common to him, so demeaning as if with just a name he could be cast aside as just another Tom.

There was no reason to cling to the things that once were.

He let the Hogwarts uniform drift away until it was replaced by a dark blazer and dress pants, the reflection gained a more somber quality, lost that youthful gaiety that had been laid on so thick for all the professors and students. There was no need for those charades anymore.

He looked lost, a perpetual stranger in a strange land, dressed in black for his own funeral.

Where would he go now? Now that he was no longer Tom Riddle, human, or even wizard. As Dudley’s soul drifted closer and closer past the event horizon of the notebook Tom considered his future and found himself drawing blanks.

He was a terrible whiteness, the infinite potential of things, forever unrealized as all doors remained open.

Dudley’s heart slowed, his the intervals between beeps growing larger as his heart struggled to produce noise, with the fading drumbeat Tom closed his eyes and beneath them Harry stared back.

There was one last attachment to the mortal plane, one Tom had not considered, and while it was fragile and limited it was one that was stronger than any others had ever been.

With a final thought Tom’s hair turned the color of straw and he left the room without looking back. 

* * *

He didn’t remember anything from his parent’s death. He’d only been one at the time but sometimes he felt like he should remember. It was the last time he’d ever see them again and he hadn’t even bothered to remember it.

He didn’t know if they’d gone to a hospital, if his mum or even his dad had clung to life for a few moments in an operating room, he didn’t know if the silence in the place had been deafening like someone was screaming.

Uncle Vernon and aunt Petunia had said for him to wait in the waiting room, the doctor had said family was allowed to stay, so when the doctor left uncle Vernon had looked at him with quiet eyes and said to get out. It was an unsaid but nonetheless true fact that Harry Potter wasn’t family.

He sat in a chair in the waiting room, his fingers laced together, staring at a clock ticking on the wall wondering if they had found anything wrong with him yet.

Dudley hadn’t woken up, had stopped moving completely, his heart was still beating and he was still breathing but there was no one there in his head anymore. Now, left in the hospital bed with an I.V. in his arm he looked like nothing more than a bloated doll.

Harry felt empty like all the feeling had just been drained out of him until he couldn’t think anymore. He just sat there, void, and looked at the clock counting tick marks in his head as each one documented the fact that the Dursleys hadn’t come back yet.

For a horrified moment, in that kitchen, before the panic had ensued and the ambulance had been called he’d wondered if they were somehow going to blame him. Say that freakishness caused it to happen and that he was the source of all the funny business. He’d wanted to run, even though he hadn’t done it, run far away where they’d never catch him because he didn’t do it. They’d all looked at him for a single moment, eyes glaring, but then they’d seemed to decide that somehow it wasn’t him and called the ambulance instead pushing him into the corner and telling him to get out of the way.

He’d known something was wrong with Dudley and he’d done nothing about it.

They wouldn’t have believed him anyway though, even if he tried to tell anybody, they wouldn’t have even listened. They would have locked him away for even suggesting something might be wrong, so it was better that he’d said nothing, since it wouldn’t have made a difference.

Now all he could do was sit and wait and watch the clock.

Tom was gone. The furthest he’d ever been from Harry, he could still feel him but it was like peering into a haze, his shadow was only just visible.  

So Harry waited, alone, and empty.

The magic seemed to be adding to the stillness of the room, it left his fingertips and travelled, a thick invisible fog until it coated every chair and magazine leaving each to feel heavy and hollow all in the same moment. It created silence for everything except for the sharp tick of the clock which echoed throughout the room as if it was a gunshot.

He didn’t want Dudley to die. He didn’t want to sit here while Dudley was dying. He didn’t want Dudley to be sick. He didn’t want anything like this all he had wanted was to leave. He just wished he could float away from this place, to move his essence through the magic until there was nothing left of Harry Potter and only his soul remained. He wanted to move past this gray surface exterior to that world he knew must exist, that place he had seen beneath the surface, where the butterflies were. He wanted to see Diagon Alley.

The clock kept ticking.

Even though he wasn’t there, wasn’t listening to what the doctors were saying, somehow he knew Dudley wouldn’t come back to this. Remembering the moment, that feeling of there being a thousand strings above Dudley’s head, had been like the magic. Only for the first time it wasn’t his magic, but someone else’s, some alien thing he could only just glimpse before it executed. Like being outside of himself and staring out at that thing that lurked there almost unseen.

Sometimes you didn’t have to be told the answer to a question, you just knew.

Dudley wasn’t coming back.

Footsteps broke the silence and the magic dissipated leaving Harry to look up and see a man standing in front of him. He was tall and thin, dressed in formal dark clothing, and looking down at Harry with an expression that was at once distant and tender in the same moment. Blonde hair glowed beneath the fluorescent lighting of the waiting room, sparks of red caught in curls as the light touched it. His eyes though were a pale and dangerous blue that almost wasn’t blue at all but rather the color of light.

He offered no explanation of what had happened to Dudley, of what was still happening to Dudley, but he didn’t need to in the end because somehow Harry already knew. Oh, he thought, oh I see. Shaking as tears ran down his face and sobs shook his frame all Harry could do was look up into those pale elegant features.

“Tom?”


	7. Chapter 7

It was a sign of how truly desperate Albus Dumbledore had become in the last few years that it was Severus Snape who introduced Harry Potter to the wizarding world rather than Hagrid or even Minerva McGonagall.

Certainly Severus had never expected it to come to this. When he had imagined Potter’s spawn and his introduction to Hogwarts it had been a confused blur of his own tortured past and that fateful damning decision, he’d imagined a miniature clone of James Potter all laughter and cruel jokes, or worse he saw Lily’s eyes staring back at him somehow knowing in spite of everything that Severus wore the blood of his parents more than any dark lord ever would. There were occasional nightmares, while the boy was still out in the muggle ether, that would have him waking pale and sweating in the dead hours of night.

He had made it no secret to Albus, or to anyone else for that matter, that he wanted nothing to do with the boy. Albus’ eyes had always glittered at these proclamations but he had never said anything otherwise and sometimes he would even smile at them. Far too many were attached to Harry Potter without even seeing his face; Severus then could serve as the counterbalance should desperate actions need to be taken. (These few mentions of what might occur should events get out of hand always managed to unnerve Severus, far more than any blunt statement ever could.)

Severus expected that if things had remained as they were then he would have remained in the role he had designated for himself without any hitch.

In early January of 1989 the Dursley household fell apart and Harry Potter disappeared. Dudley Dursley died quite suddenly of what was diagnosed as an underlying heart condition aggravated by obesity. When the news reached Albus he demanded an inspection of the body to find traces of magic but by then it was already too late and the cremation had occurred.

Harry Potter never returned from the hospital and it did not look as if the Vernon or Petunia Dursley had expected him to.

The small consolation was that Harry Potter was not dead or in mortal peril, rather, the arrow in Dumbledore’s office that pointed to the boy’s location unwaveringly settled upon ‘unknown’ and remained there ever since. However, this game wasn’t played for Harry Potter’s safety or comfort, there were many ways in which a healthy boy-who-lived could be much worse than a dead one.

There had been a number of quiet searches, not conducted by the Order of the Phoenix who still blindly assumed that Dumbledore had everything in hand when it came to little Harry Potter, but by Severus or Albus themselves.

Since the war Severus had become something akin to Albus’ left hand. That which he relied on for the work he did not wish for others to see or know, something that would cause any other servant to lose faith in him for but required confidence and skill that could be found in very few, that which dealt with the dust and the secrets. This was the price he paid for Lily; the world would only ever be brutally honest with him and expect him to carry on with his work regardless.

As Dumbledore’s eyes he had wandered through the overlooked magical ghettos of London, the mansions of the few Death Eaters who had managed to evade Azkaban namely Lucius, and even muggle London for extensive periods of time. Always though his hands would return empty and he would resign himself to another few months of Albus Dumbledore’s ever growing fear and his own death filled nightmares of promises left unfulfilled.

He wondered occasionally if the boy hadn’t been smuggled out of the country and that all this scrounging about through the United Kingdom would come to nothing when he was found instead in the heart of the Soviet Union or some such nonsense.

As it was the boy hadn’t left England, had not even managed to leave the city of London, and the answers to their prayers came in the form of a small envelope with an address listed in black ink to a Mr. Harry James Potter.

Should the Dursleys have prevented Harry from applying, as Severus considered all too likely given Petunia was his aunt, then Albus had planned to send Hagrid; a man who would present to Harry all that was best about the wizarding world, whose faith in Albus Dumbledore would not be shaken no matter what condition he might find the boy who lived in. However with Harry’s disappearance and now relocation the task became more delicate. They both knew that he could not send Minerva, she followed Albus yes, but should she discover the details of Harry’s disappearance whatever they may have been and Albus’ purposeful blind eye towards the situation she might be just as quick to leave. In the end this task was left to Albus Dumbledore’s faithful janitor, otherwise known as Severus Snape.

He had been right; the boy looked just like a miniature James Potter. Or rather, almost identical, instead of James’ brown eyes he was met with Lily’s beneath dark untidy hair, of all her features to inherit why was it the eyes?

The boy had opened the door almost before Severus had managed to knock, staring at him with owlish green eyes behind round glasses. He was small for his age if Severus hadn’t known better he would have marked him as one or two years younger than eleven. He wore decent clothing, not anything overtly expensive, but certainly nothing cheap either showing perhaps an average income. He regarded Severus with keen interest for a few moments, saying nothing, just taking the sight of him in. Severus had come in muggle clothing to the apartment and although the suit did not quite fit his bony frame he was sure that it did not require as much staring as the boy was currently doing. Perhaps he found it funny; James Potter would have found it delightful.

Before Severus could lose his temper and tell the boy to stop standing there like a half wit and move or say something a rather dry voice rang out from inside.

“Whatever you’re selling I’m not particularly interested.”

Harry’s head turned towards the inside of the apartment, ignoring Severus for the moment leaving the door only partially open as he said back, “I don’t think he’s one of those types of people.”

“Jehovah’s Witness, then? You know I might just find that more offensive, I understand people wishing for me to part with my money but my atheism is more precious than gold.”

Again the boy shook his head and glanced at Severus, “No, he doesn’t have any pamphlets.”

Inside the room past where Severus could see he could hear the faint scraping of a chair against tile and several footsteps. The door opened wider revealing not only the inside of the apartment but a man as well. The man was very young, almost too young in fact to be called an adult, he looked barely out of school and yet even standing there he had a charisma that aged him a sense of confidence and knowledge that made it hard to picture him as a child. Harry looked fragile, with his thin bones and his wide eyes, this man looked delicate. He had the finely sculpted features that one might find in an old sculpture, a thin physique, and a pale milky complexion that somehow failed to look sickly in spite of everything. His dominant feature though were his eyes, a pale blue that almost lacked pigmentation, that seemed only to reflect the world surrounding him and yet if one peered closer they could see colors of thought dancing behind in a mad whirlwind.

Behind him the small apartment was laid out so that the kitchen connected briefly into the living room with a door to the bathroom and another to the bedroom. There was no dirty laundry or unwashed dishes lying about as he might expect with a man this age but there were books. Books littered the apartment, dominating all free and unfree spaces, each one showing its own particular brand of wear. From the titles Severus could see he found a wide range of topics, all muggle, and yet they seemed to reach every aspect of muggle academia. Biology, physics, chemistry, engineering, psychology, history, philosophy, every subject Severus could name had its own stack of thick books.

He knew almost immediately that there was no other person in this apartment, this young man with blonde curling hair was the source of authority, and Harry looked for no one else and neither did the young man.

“So what is it that you are selling then?” The man asked his lips quirking into a grin that Severus almost wanted to call wry and yet couldn’t quite manage.

(Severus had heard that voice before, or something similar to it, that soft and yet commanding tone that brooked no argument. He had heard it long ago and it had burned itself into his memory and yet he couldn’t place it, certainly not with a muggle boy.)

“I’m not.” Severus said with a small sneer before shaking himself and telling himself it was only one afternoon and he’d best get over it. “Good afternoon, gentlemen, my name is professor Snape and I have come to deliver Mr. Potter his letter.”

If Harry Potter noticed the bitterness his name had been imbued with he didn’t notice instead reaching for the letter that Severus handed him with a reverent hesitation, as if the very parchment the letter was written on was sacred. However it appeared that the other man did, his eyes narrowing briefly at Severus but the expression died quickly enough and the blue eyes flicked instead to the letter itself. (It was strange, but for that moment their eyes had met, Severus almost thought that something brushed against his occlumency shields but it was so slight and so swift that he must have imagined it.)

“Magic?” The man said reading off of the letter. (Later, in the pensive, he’d find that it wasn’t so much said with scoffing disbelief as he’d originally heard but rather with vague amusement; as if he didn’t have a problem with the idea but rather the word itself that had been chosen to represent it.)

He’d never envied Minerva, attempting to convince these muggles of magic. Severus sighed and made his way into the apartment pushing past both the boy and the man, “Yes, magic, I can demonstrate its reality if you wish Mr….”

The man continued to stand in the doorway with Harry regarding Severus with cool detachment as he might the odd stray cat, finally the man said, “Evans, Thomas Evans. And this of course as you appear to already know is Harry Potter, my cousin.”

When pressed later by Dumbledore he could not remember most of the rest of this first meeting until it had been placed into the pensive and reviewed there. Almost mechanically he had demonstrated magic (a simple _Wingardium Leviosa_ ) and had gone on to explain the school itself and all the necessities to attend. The boy hadn’t squirmed as he had expected or acted overtly excited at the thought of being a wizard, it was almost as if the boy already appeared to _know_ that he was a wizard and that the reverence the excitement was in the fact that Severus was one as well. In the end Severus just chalked it to the boy’s own inflated ego rather than anything else. It was the letter, Severus’ wand, and the list of supplies that held his attention and not the brief demonstration of magic. (If anything Severus would say he caught a gleam of disappointment in the green eyes, as if to ask if floating objects was all he could manage.)

Most of Severus’ attention was caught by the man. Intellectually Severus knew that muggles had the capability of being highly intelligent, that in spite of their lack of magic and mundane existence not all were totally incompetent, it was a little different knowing something and looking it in the face. The man did not speak much throughout the ordeal, it seemed as if he didn’t feel the need, he didn’t shift or twitch or make any sort of natural movements in a conversation rather he sat perfectly still and watched. It was as if he had learned movement and that this bizarre stillness, his eyes like two stars burning occluding Severus without even magic to aid him, was his natural state.

Harry referred to the man as uncle but according to him they were biological if somewhat distant cousins. Thomas Evans was twenty one and looked very young for his age. In 1989 when Harry had come to live with him he had been nineteen. He’d attended university fairly early and thus was now finished with his undergraduate degree and was now attending graduate school and working at the university as a TA. His mother, the only family member he had kept in consistent contact with, had died a few years prior and his father had been missing since his conception.

“I did not have what you would call the happiest of childhoods.” He’d said pouring the three of them tea at the table after various books had been pushed out of the way, “My grandfather, Harry’s grandfather’s brother on his mother’s side, was not a good person. When he was a little younger than I am now he became estranged. Sordid details aren’t meant to be told over tea in one’s kitchen but I will say that the Evans were not sorry to see the back of him.”

A few years back he had decided to investigate the other side of the family to see if reconciliation was possible and if not that just to meet them once in his life. After a few months of researching he found to his surprise that he had very few relatives left on that side of the family as well. Only the Dursleys and Harry Potter remained.

He was not sure what happened to Dudley Dursley that January, only that by the time he tracked down the family the Dursleys were in no way capable of caring for Harry Potter. Given certain signs Thomas had seen in the meeting and in the Dursley’s home when he had come to pick up Harry’s belongings he wasn’t certain if they were capable of caring for Harry before Dudley’s death either.

“You could have sent him to foster care.” Severus interjected at one point to which the man shrugged.

“Yes, I suppose I could have.” He did not remark that it would have been easier or that he could never have forgiven himself if he had, he simply let the possibility hang in the air, without reference.

The man did remind him of Lily in a vaguely distant way. He was colder than Lily and more in control, he burned with her passion but it was a cold calculated thing and not the vibrancy that Lily had possessed. They shared the fair hair and pale features and the expressive cast to their eyes but even so something in this man was so very different from her.  

The meeting ended with a shaking of hands, directions to Diagon Alley and instructions on how to access the Potter vault, as well as a brief explanation of Platform 9 ¾ . Still at the end of the meeting the man had been staring at Severus as if he expected some other information, as if that shouldn’t have been the end, but whatever he was waiting for he didn’t receive it as Severus left without parting any more information glad to see the back of the Potter spawn.

Later with Albus Dumbledore he would spend a few hours searching muggle records for this estranged grandfather. They found various prison records as well as other less eyebrow raising documents. From there they had found documentation on the boy’s mother and finally papers on Thomas Evans himself. Blood, taken from Thomas Evans with the clever use of befuddlement on him and the boy, was run through potions and found to indeed be related to Harry Potter.

It was true that once Albus had selected the Dursleys he had not looked further into Lily’s side of the family for relatives. It was true that these documents, this list of relatives, could very well have been overlooked ten years ago and for good reason as well. When Harry Potter had disappeared they had assumed first and foremost that it was a wizard’s doing and had not bothered with muggle records so it was possible that he had been overlooked. They had relied on scrying and various other less reliable means to point them in the right direction rather than the muggle bureaucracy. He had at some points checked the foster home system but it had lead him nowhere.

Still, there was something about that boy that rang distant bells in his memory, and he couldn’t help but think it was all a bit too neat.

Both Albus and Severus agreed that the man would bear watching if only because he was Harry Potter’s guardian.

* * *

Hermione Granger didn’t say anything to her parents but she was very nervous about attending Hogwarts.

This, she thought to herself as she sat alone in her compartment, was not like her old school had been. There learning had been cumulative, everything had built off of everything else, when you arrived you already knew most everything and only a little was added at a time. She’d never been taught magic before and she’d be alone in that, most wizards and witches had parents who were magical, but she didn’t.

She’d read most of her books at least three times already and it was only through indulgence that she was rereading _Hogwarts a History_ now instead of her spell books. Still, it was all very exciting, magic that is.

There’d been a few times when she was younger that odd things happened. It didn’t happen often, maybe once or twice, and her parents had written it off as bizarre accidents. Hermione too hadn’t really believed in it, sometimes in spare moments, she’d think that it had been real but most of the time she told herself that older mature children didn’t believe in things like fairies or magic. Yet, here she was, believing in magic but for real this time.

Looking around her and at the door to the compartment she wondered for a moment if anyone would come to sit with her. She’d never had many friends in school, if any at all, she’d just been so bookish and even then there hadn’t really been… Well it didn’t really matter now since she was going to Hogwarts.

Before she could get too engrossed her book the door slid open and a boy around her age stepped inside dragging a large case behind him. He was small and dark haired and for a moment when he stepped in he didn’t say anything he just closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Um, hi,” Hermione said putting away her book for the moment, “Are you a first year too? I’m Hermione Granger, I’m very excited, I never knew about magic until I got my letter. Did you?”

The boy stared at her blankly as she continued to talk almost like he was processing her and then just as suddenly he was giving her a rather awkward smile, like he was trying to attempt an expression that he had seen before but couldn’t quite manage himself.

“Um, yeah, I’m Harry.” He said and reached out to shake her hand afterwards he lifted his trunk overhead which must have been lighter than it looked and took the seat across from her, “I guess I’m muggle born. My parents were wizards but they… well they died a while ago. I live with my uncle now, well he’s really my cousin, and he’s a muggle.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Hermione managed unsure of what to say. Sometimes you heard about terrible things happening to peoples families, in stories many of the heroes or heroines were orphans, but to see it in real life in person was so much different.

The boy however shrugged with a sad sort of smile, “I’m okay, really, I never got to know them and my uncle is more than could ever hope for anyway.”

There was a moment of silence that was almost oppressive, the boy didn’t seem to mind too much though, his smile didn’t fade really but he turned to look out the window and watch the countryside roll past. She wasn’t really sure how to describe him, even to herself, he had green eyes very bright green eyes that almost seemed to burn but other than that she couldn’t really find the words.

“It’s all very exciting, isn’t it?” She suddenly exclaimed clapping her hands together, “I tried some spells at home, they all worked for me, even when it’s tricky to read the wand movements in a book. Have you tried anything yet?”

Somewhat startled the boy looked back again with that blank look before adjusting his glasses somewhat awkwardly, “I guess I tried some stuff, I mean, magic just sort of _is_ you know? To be honest I guess I just don’t really see the point of a wand.”

“What do you mean you don’t see the point of a wand? You can’t do magic without one!” Hermione commented remembering getting her own wand and that feeling of connectedness like she had just remembered a limb she had forgotten, the boy shrugged slightly before standing and rummaging through his trunk eventually pulling out a book.

The book in question was not one that had been on their reading list. It was old and somewhat worn and perhaps the most important fact about it was that it looked like it was written in some other language.

“What’s this supposed to be?” Hermione said flipping through yellowed pages, eyes taking in the hand drawn diagrams detailed throughout the book.

The boy plopped back down into his seat this time with a more genuine smile, “Well, you don’t _need_ a wand to do magic; there are other ways of doing it. My uncle is a bit of an um… well let’s just say he’s really smart. He kind of thought the whole the universe only responds to wand waving and bastardized Latin was complete nonsense so he started looking up I guess what’d you’d call other ‘systems’ of magic once we found out that I was a wizard.”

The boy motioned to the book with a pale hand, “Jewish people used magic all the time, before Grindlewald that is not so much now, but they didn’t use wands. They’d use written runes and they were really good at it too sometimes able to do a lot more than wand waving wizards. I guess the trouble came down to the fact that, in a direct fight, someone trained with a wand could easily win.”

Hermione looked down at the book again, guessing now that it was in Hebrew, and then looked up at the boy suddenly feeling very inferior. Hermione had only read her class books, several times now, but they were still only her class books. Most of the things the boy had mentioned she hadn’t even heard of and he was supposed to be raised by muggles like she was.

“You can read Hebrew?” She asked in a quiet voice, maybe he was Jewish though, or his uncle was Jewish and he’d known how to do it for a long time.

The boy vigorously shook his head no holding his hands up in a sign of surrender, “Oh, no, I only speak and read English.” He gave a little laugh, “Remember how I said my uncle is like… crazy smart or whatever? Well he bought a bunch of books like this that he can barely read and tries to translate them in his free time. He’s pretty good at it but it still takes him a really long time. He said I should take a couple with me and look for a translation spell and see if I can save him some time.”

Hermione felt the stirrings of relief in her. She’d always been the best student in class. It had been her defined role in life, the smart one, the bookworm, and while sometimes it had brought her a lot of grief it was still her role. For a moment she almost hadn’t had that position to lean back on, hadn’t been able to call herself the smartest in the class, and for a terrifying moment she wondered who she was if she wasn’t that person anymore.

Still, something about the boy’s story bothered her, “Isn’t your uncle a muggle though? Why does he care about how magic works?”

The boy looked somewhat confused by the question, his eyebrows knitted, before slowly running through his thoughts, “Well my uncle’s in graduate school right now as an engineer so he likes knowing how things work. Even though magic’s a secret it’s still there, still a part of the universe and physics, we just don’t know it. I mean, even though he can’t do magic that doesn’t mean he can’t know about it, right? Just like how no one’s ever seen a black hole doesn’t mean we can’t think about them and guess what’s happened.”

Hermione tried to picture this uncle of Harry’s but was drawing blank. Her own parents had been shocked to say the least but then afterwards they had been strangely subdued as if understanding that this was a world they didn’t really belong to. Every time she talked to them about magic, about what she was learning in her books, they would smile and nod but they weren’t really interested in it. She couldn’t imagine them showing enthusiasm, enthusiasm like hers, for something they would never be able to do themselves.

“I suppose.” Hermione said thoughtfully thinking about science and magic and how maybe they weren’t that different after all finally she shook herself and went back to her original questioning though, “You said you tried some magic, can you show me something?”

The conversation continued and slowly but surely they made their way to Scotland where Hogwarts waited.

* * *

Harry Potter had known for three years now that his name was going to be something of a problem. Since that first day Tom had finally taken him to Diagon Alley, he had known, that he wasn’t who he had thought he was.

Tom had been surprised too. Although Tom didn’t say it, after they had both finished reading something called _Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts_ , Harry knew that whatever he had imagined about Harry’s past and his parents it hadn’t been that. Even though it was terrible that they were dead, even though he should even be able to think about things like this he wished they had died in a car crash instead. The truth was so much worse.

Later Tom told him that he had assumed that Harry was a Potter bastard, removed from the family out of shame and even that Harry would have preferred, because at least then his parents would be living and he would only be Harry.

The girl, Hermione Granger, was looking at him in shock as his name was called out for the sorting hat. She’d probably read about him, just like Harry himself had read about him, looking through all those published books and finding that ambiguous night written over and over again.

He hadn’t really managed to make any friends, even after Dudley… after what happened to Dudley. After visiting Diagon Alley and realizing that Harry Potter could not enter the wizarding world before he was expected Harry and Tom moved into an apartment in London, Tom faking all sorts of documents and bank accounts, creating a moderate living for the pair of them and enrolling Harry in a new school.

“You don’t have to be friends with them,” Tom said before the first day lounging in his new found body pale eyes glowing in the half light, “You don’t even have to look at them if you don’t want to. Just give them the idea of your presence and let them be satisfied with that.”

He tried at first, to be friends with people his age, but even without Dudley spreading rumors he found he just didn’t get people his age. He just didn’t care about the same things they did and they didn’t care about what he did. The main problem was that they didn’t have magic and to Harry magic was everything that was important in the world.

Tom still flitted in and out of his thoughts, the connection between them never breaking with his removal from the diary, for the first year he was always feeling the surprise and wonder Tom found at being in a body once again. Things like touch, sound, and sight were particularly miraculous in those first few months. Sometimes it had been distracting but he supposed it was worth getting distracted by it in school, Tom always seemed so much more real than school anyway.

Eventually he registered for a university’s graduate program, not long after he decided to become Thomas Evans, Harry’s distant muggle cousin.

It was the night after they had first visited Diagon Alley, both looking at the various references to Harry James Potter with grim faces, Harry unsure what to think of it and Tom too for that matter. According to Tom that curse left nothing alive, it was death in its moth basic and cleanest form, no one had ever been hit by it and lived. They’d sat in silence for some time on Harry’s newly purchased bed; it was Tom who spoke first, giving details he had never mentioned when in the diary.

“When I placed myself in the diary it was the summer of 1944. The Germans had yet to be defeated, Dumbledore had not yet had his fateful duel with Grindlewald, and war was very much London’s reality.” He paused and laced his fingers together staring at Harry, “With fifty years having gone by I can’t tell you his name or even why he would come after your family.”

Harry still didn’t say anything, just stared at the wall and imagined what it must have looked like, sometimes when he dreamed he saw green light and heard screaming.

“It does explain why you were left with the Dursleys.” Tom continued in that mulling way of his, meandering onto the diverging path and following wherever it might lead, “I’m afraid my choice of identities has just grown very limited.”

His eyes looked tired when Harry turned to look him in the face but the resolve shown there was unwavering.

“What do you mean?”

“I imagine that there are many parties interested in your state of affairs. Dumbledore I would presume to be one, there will most likely be others. The wizarding community in Great Britain is quite small, after two wars I imagine that it’s almost the same as living in a small town, at some point everyone knows everyone. I could not appear simply as an unknown English wizard, even muggle born I would soon be caught, and they would never allow for a foreigner to hold custody of Harry Potter. It’s odd, I never thought I’d pretend to be a muggle.”

“A muggle?”

Tom held out a hand to Harry, as if introducing himself, “Thomas Evans, your distant cousin on your mother’s side, muggle documents are fairly easy to fake and wizards never look too hard at what they believe is beneath them.”

Professor Snape had seemed to believe it at any rate, unbelievably to Harry, it was as if the man had been blinded by something. To Harry’s eyes Tom bled magic, he always had, his eyes were lit by it and wherever he went he glowed like the sun. Even in a human body he looked like an angel, how could anyone mistake him for anything human? But professor Snape had, not even for a human, but for a non-magical human too; for a person as ordinary and unremarkable as uncle Vernon.

Walking to the hat now his eyes flicked to the man who watched the events, sneering across at him, as if disgusted by the mere sight of him. He remembered Tom’s eyes after the man had left, how they burned, and how in a quiet and dangerous voice he said, “Be very careful of that man Harry, I do believe he means to let his pettiness destroy first you and then himself.”

Tom didn’t explain what he meant but Harry had always known, even since the beginning, that Tom was rarely incorrect.

He didn’t bother looking at the rest of them, he had a feeling they all were watching, as if this moment would determine something truly monumental. This was the only peek into Harry Potter’s soul that they would get for free and they intended to make the most of it. Inside his head the incessant churning of Tom’s distant thoughts almost like a second heartbeat. He wasn’t fully present, not like he had been when he was bodiless, but he would never be gone. He would always be there, somewhere off in the distance, no matter what form he chose to take.

He sat on the stool and stared out at the audience, clenching his hands on his school robes, and waiting for the aged hat to descend.

_Now, you’re an odd one aren’t you?_

And suddenly there was a new voice in his head but unlike Tom’s there was no sense of presence to this one, behind the words and the reasoning there was no intent, no real soul. It was like a machine, just without the metal gears that would make it obvious, it only had enough awareness to complete its task and just gave the illusion of more.

He felt it rustling through his memories, analyzing each somewhat distantly, before casting it aside and then finding another. When it reached Tom it stalled, paused almost as if in confusion, before moving past again.

Tom had had some opinions on his sorting, “To be honest, Harry, I have no idea where you’ll end up.”

They’d been sitting in the kitchen of the apartment, Tom reading through some new books he had purchased while Harry was flipping once again through Hogwarts a History. He’d read it several times by then but had never quite gotten up the nerve to ask Tom about the houses because somehow it felt like he’d be asking Tom about what he thought of Harry himself and Harry wasn’t quite sure he was prepared for that answer.

Still the words came out anyway, rushed and trembling, each word shaking with all its weight. Tom’s eyes flicked up still distracted by his own thoughts so that they seemed less clear than usual, dulled by distraction, but even so he set the book aside and gave Harry his attention as he thought over the question.

“The sorting process is fairly limited, it takes a person, all their thoughts and aspects of their personality and tries to fit it into four broad roles. It works well enough for eleven year olds, because they’re children and haven’t really experienced anything yet. Eleven year olds don’t have deep thoughts not deep enough to wonder if there’s something beyond being ambitious, curious, brave, or loyal. However you have had more experiences than most children and that is sure to be reflected in your sorting. It’s not so easy to place your experiences into those labelled boxes and no matter which box you choose someone is going to take it the wrong way. In the end it’s really just a talking hat and people always seem to forget that.”

Harry had stared and looked at the book, unsure of the answer himself, not knowing if he’d wanted a single word response or whatever this response was but willing to take it all the same. He asked a different question then, “What house were you in?”  

“Slytherin.” No hesitation, no inflection, just a simple word as if it should never have been doubted in the first place.

“Why Slytherin?” Harry asked and Tom gave Harry a bitter smile that didn’t quite suit the face of Thomas Evans.

“Because I was cruel and I wanted out.”

So now the hat was on his own head and as it searched it muttered to itself and in turn to Harry. _You are an extremely difficult case but it appears that you already knew that. Decisions, decisions, so very many decisions. Hardworking and incredibly loyal, loyal in the face of all obstacles, but that loyalty is limited; you’ve spent most of it already and it’s more difficult to trust now than it used to be._

An image of Dudley in the hospital and Tom walking out into the waiting room in the guise of Thomas Evans, his eyes a cold fire that held no humanity in them.

_Highly intelligent, and curious, but not driven towards knowledge. I don’t think you’d find yourself spending that much time in the library._

_Clever and cunning but it seems you lack ambition, you have no true goals now, do you?_

It seemed there was only one option left and it was the one Harry had least expected. Still even as he had that thought the hat explained for him, _because you did not flinch._

“Gryffindor!”

And the silent room that had waited with clear agitation burst into robust applause as all their expectations had been filled.


	8. Chapter 8

He’d like to say that it was the odd day that found him surrounded by stacks of books and files in coffee shops trying to catch up on fifty years worth of wizarding and muggle history all while procrastinating on the physics problem sets he had to grade but that would be lying.

He used to do it at the kitchen table but given that Harry was at Hogwarts he thought that hours spent laboring over documents bordered dangerously close to becoming a hermit which he was not quite willing to do. There was also the small fact that his apartment had been magically bugged within hours of Harry’s departure for Hogwarts, he had to give credit where credit was due, Dumbledore did not waste any time.

Of course he hadn’t done this for a while.

Three years before, when he had decided to become Thomas Evans, this had been a far more common occurrence. It was a period of time that involved large intakes of caffeine (fatigue had been a particularly brutal sensation in the first few months) and subsequent migraines. What was truly obnoxious about the entire affair was not muddling through Wizengamot politics during the restoration (which looked to be as bureaucratic and nonsensical as ever) but the fact that he could not find reference to the most recent dark lord’s name.

Instead he found He Who Must Not Be Named, You Know Who, and other variations of the vaguest descriptors he had ever heard.  He had no doubt that if he walked up to a wizard on the street and started talking about “That One Guy” they’d probably assume he was automatically referencing the dark lord from the seventies.

Whoever was in charge of censorship had been paid very well in the past decade. He’d considered it slightly odd that a more specific name hadn’t been mentioned, after all he could think of several people besides himself who most definitely did not know who, but it hadn’t really begun to annoy him until he’d searched through several other texts and they all referred to the dark lord in the same manner.

He’d suspected as soon as he saw mention of a dark lord that it had been Lord Voldemort, his better half, but after pouring through books he wasn’t sure. It had been years since the aspiring dark lord had thought to write to Tom Riddle and even then he had never divulged much information. The last he’d heard his other half had been searching for rare artifacts, namely antiques from the founders, and seemed to have little thought to spare for revolution.

(In the notebook he’d remembered being somewhat perplexed by this, true he couldn’t remember a definite plan on leaving Hogwarts on how to bend the wizarding world to his will, but he hadn’t remembered being fixated on centuries old knick-knacks either. For all he knew Lord Voldemort was still collecting Founder’s heirlooms the way old women collected rare stamps.)

Thinking on the events portrayed in the various sources he read he tried to fit his own human face onto the past. It was true he had been a little bit on the violent side when he was younger but he couldn’t imagine himself massacring a family of little more than school children for what appeared to be no reason. The nature of his revolutionary movement also seemed a bit alien to Tom. The dark lord’s supporters (at least those listed as being thrown into Azkaban), were the heirs to noble houses who already held most of the power in the government. And yet for some reason this dark lord had felt the need to resort to terrorism, attacking major wizarding areas like Diagon Alley seemingly at random, killing not only muggle borns but also many neutral wizards as well.

The government had been fairly shaky during the restoration period and even onwards, with enough financial and pureblooded support, a bloodless coup should not only have been possible but rather simple to orchestrate. The only real obstacle that stood in the way was Dumbledore who appeared to hold a ridiculous amount of power for an elected official, Chief Warlock and Supreme Mugwump as well as the headmaster of Hogwarts, the deputy headmaster appeared to have gained quite a few new pies to stick his fingers in during Tom’s absence. There also was speculation in a few history books that Dumbledore was head of a resistance movement called The Order of the Phoenix, personally Tom favored a name like The Resistance but it did suit Dumbledore’s need for the dramatic perfectly, not only the resistance movement but the only organized resistance movement as the aurors were frankly in shambles at the time. Remove Dumbledore and the government would have collapsed. However, during the entire history of the second wizarding war (which again wasn’t a war so much as it was terrorism) there were no attempts made on Albus Dumbledore’s life.

Instead the dark lord spent his time and energy massacring the Potter family and their year old son only to be blown up when Harry Potter proved to be a magical aberration.

After Tom had been accepted to graduate school (although accepted was a little bit of a stretch considering he falsified all his testing information and transcripts) he’d moved on to other matters to occupy his time only looking back into wizarding history every now and then when the whim crossed his mind.

For three years it had hardly been relevant but now that Harry was going to Hogwarts all the old skeletons were coming out to play.

“Severus Snape,” He muttered to himself taking a sip of his coffee, even after three years it tasted too strong, he’d been a wreck the first six months in a body. Possession and the body itself were not the same thing, he hadn’t realized how powerful nerves really were, and how jagged reality appeared. He’d been functioning enough to walk through Diagon Alley, to falsify identities and bank accounts, but only just. He found himself continually distracted just by how bright everything was, how demanding all the features of the world were, until his thoughts were little more than drifting moments of sensation. For a good while Thomas Evans had been twitchier than a heroin junky in withdrawal, but that time had passed, and while sunlight was sometimes blinding to the point where he had to wear sunglasses indoors it was manageable.

The particular records he was looking at that day were a little more interesting than the general history books he had started in. Through compulsion, a charming smile, and a large amount of patience that he hadn’t possessed until after he had been stuffed in a diary he had managed to find the court transcriptions of Severus Snape’s trial. To a wizard these would have been fairly easy to access, the trial was public, and Severus Snape had not had the money to hush up the results if they weren’t to his liking but as a muggle anything in the wizarding world was a bitch to get. (He’d considered going in as some fake English wizard but that involved creating glamours and identity which was the whole mess he’d tried to avoid in the first place but considering how much of a hassle it was to get anything done as a muggle he might have no choice in the future.)

Severus Snape had grown up the poor, half-blood, son of a drunkard and a woman whose grip on reality was loose to say the least. According to the school records shown in the trial he was a brilliant Potions student and one of the better Defense students in his year. With his house being Slytherin it was not implausible that he would be recruited by the dark lord for his talent if not his pedigree.

Of course these trials were barely trials. He had looked into a couple of them before and paltry evidence was given here and there but it turned out that the dark lord had made things rather easy for them. Each initiate in his movement, the Death Eaters a name that sounded a bit more cultish than political, was branded on their left arm with a picture of a snake trying to eat the moon. As far as he could tell only Lucius Malfoy had managed to escape Azkaban, bribing many officials, and claiming to be under the imperious curse throughout his involvement in the organization.

Shuffling through his papers he found a photograph of Severus Snape during his trial, a sallow young man with eyes that looked as if he had already died and standing next to him a somewhat younger looking Albus Dumbledore with a hand clasped on the young man’s shoulder.

What was truly interesting about the trial of Severus Snape before the Wizengamot was not that he had the dark mark but that he did not go to Azkaban. Very few other marked individuals had managed to escape the prison, Lucius Malfoy was one with a no doubt extensive use of bribes, memory charms, and a claim that he had been under the imperious curse and a man named Karkaroff was another as he had fled to the Soviets and was given sanctuary by Durmstang. Severus Snape had no resources to fall back on and no friends to call in his hour of need and yet he had been spared by none other than Albus Dumbledore.

“Without the aid of this young man,” Dumbledore was listed as saying in the transcripts, “The dark lord would very much still be alive today.”

That statement was not clarified and further details given in the trial had been censored giving nothing more than the verdict of not-guilty.

The man quickly gained his mastery in Potions after the trial, having been in the process of earning it in the years before, and then became a member of Hogwarts faculty as the Potions professor taking after Tom’s dear old friend Slughorn. He’d been teaching there for a little less than ten years now and according to the NEWT and OWL in the past decade he was not doing a very good job.

And when he had first laid eyes on Harry James Potter there had been clear distaste and perhaps even a trace of loathing.

(He had waited in that meeting with Harry, waited even as Severus Snape drew blood from him and the boy to test for magical relations which would no doubt prove positive given the nature of the notebook and Tom’s resurrection, and Severus Snape had never said or even hinted at Harry Potter’s past as the boy who lived even when it seemed clear that Harry knew nothing about wizards and had been raised by muggles.

It was that small action, more so than anything else, that raised red flags in Tom’s head.)

Whatever Severus Snape might be, whoever he might truly work for, he was not on Harry Potter’s side.

He set the papers aside and turned to stare at his reflection in the window. He looked like an underpaid graduate student facing his latest bout of insomnia. Blonde hair in disarray, a mundane blue sweater sporting wrinkles, dark shadows under his eyes Tom Riddle would have been appalled at the sight of him.

But then wasn’t that the point?

He felt he should be more bothered by the events, by pretending to be a muggle, by whiling away the last three years catching up on muggle academia and teaching Harry everything he knew about magic. It should have been difficult, a trial of patience that left him seething, but he was or at least he had been strangely content.

There were days when he would take Harry to the park, they’d set up a few notice me not wards along with some other necessities, and they’d work on just about everything Tom could think of. The sun would seem so uncharacteristically bright for England and everything would be filled with color, and there they would be, a young man in cheap but somewhat formal clothing wearing sunglasses and a young boy sitting barefoot and cross-legged in the grass.

Harry wasn’t gone, he told himself, he could still feel the connection in their minds and if he so chose he could follow it completely leaving the body of Thomas Evans to fall into unconsciousness. No, Harry wasn’t gone, he was just at Hogwarts for a little while.

It had been surprisingly difficult at Kings Cross station to let Harry board that train, more than he had ever expected it to be, and his only consolation in allowing events to occur as they did was that this was what Tom had promised Harry all those years ago.

It had been three years, some attachment was inevitable, but even in the beginning Harry had always been special.

And so here he was, researching Severus Snape and a dark lord, wondering if these were shadows of giants looming over Harry Potter’s head.

“And to think I once enjoyed this sort of thing.” He muttered to himself turning away from Thomas Evans’ tired reflection in the glass.

Severus Snape would prove to be trouble and with him would come worse trouble in the form of Albus Dumbledore, Tom was more than certain of it. And somewhere out there in the ether, lying in wait, was Lord Voldemort either as this dark lord or as something else, he too would come like a hurricane and set his eye on the magical anomaly that was Harry Potter.

Because there was a question in that, wasn’t there, what if Lord Voldemort wasn’t collecting magical stamps? What then?

Tom stuffed the papers back into his bag and grabbed his now cold coffee and left the café, by the end of all of this he was going to need a chess board to keep track of all the missing pieces. 

* * *

There was something wrong about Harry Potter and for some reason Hermione found that reassuring. It was really the only thing she had found reassuring about Hogwarts.

She’d never been slapped before but she felt that learning that Harry from the train was Harry Potter might have felt the same way. There’d only been stunned silence as she watched him from the Gryffindor table, thinking, he never told me. She’d thought they’d been getting along very well but then, he’d never said his last name, never mentioned that he wasn’t a muggleborn and that he was in fact Harry Potter who was written about in books.

She wondered if the uncle was a lie too, after all, how could Harry Potter live with muggles?

Perhaps what was even worse than that though was that he was the best in all the classes. She’d answered the most questions but that was only because he didn’t raise his hand, when it came to practical work he beat her in everything. And then when he got house points for doing anything he always got this sheepish almost embarrassed expression on his face like he hadn’t really wanted the attention but of course he did because who wouldn’t? It’d happened in Charms, it’d happened in Transfiguration, everywhere she turned she was so far behind him in everything no matter how much she’d read or practiced.

Within the first week all the girls were talking about marrying him in the future. He’d already been popular because of his defeat of You Know Who but the fact that he was the smartest wizard in the class by a long shot made him bedroom gossip worthy.

“I heard professor McGonagall say that no one since Dumbledore has managed to transfigure the needle that fast.” Lavender whispered to Pavarti while Hermione ground her teeth, “And he’s so cute about it too, like he has no idea what’s going on, cheeks get so red whenever he gets house points.”

“Well,” Hermione said looking up from one of her own books, “I don’t think he’s that smart. He probably just made up never doing it before, I bet he practices all the time and just makes it look like he gets it right on his first try.”

The girls looked over towards her with expressions that Hermione was horrifyingly familiar with. Exasperation, distaste, disregard, it had only been a week and here they all were again. “No need to be so bitter, Granger, you still got second in everything else.”

“I just don’t think he’s that great is all.” Hermione said in one final rushed sentence before grabbing her book and heading down to the common area leaving her roommates behind. Just as she left she thought she heard the final words, “Geez, you think being a muggleborn she wouldn’t be so…”

Hermione never heard what she wouldn’t have been, she didn’t ask later.

She’d started spending time in the library, away from everyone else and closer to the books, she’d hoped that someone might sit next to her and ask her anything or just start some conversation but no one ever did. Within a few days it was like being in school all over again, sitting by herself at lunch, and just watching everyone else walk by.

She secretly hoped, when she couldn’t help herself, that the boy from the train would come back and sit with her, Harry not Harry Potter. The one whose green eyes danced behind glasses when he talked about magic, the one who listened to everything she had to say never losing patience or looking bored, every time she sat in the library she would look up from her books at the sound of footsteps and be disappointed when it wasn’t him. It had been such a promising start.

So it was almost reassuring when top of the class perfect Harry Potter wasn’t so perfect after all, she just wasn’t sure anyone else had noticed it.

It started in Defense, the moment they walked into the room he’d stiffened and his face had gone white as a sheet. Ron Weasley, Harry Potter’s newest best friend, asked if he was okay but Harry didn’t say anything but just stood there shaking looking like he was going to bolt any minute. Eventually though, without any warning he continued to walk into the room, but this time mechanically, as if he wasn’t even thinking about what he was doing.

There turned out to be no practical work in defense, it was all reading from the text book, and she suspected (with a sense of betrayal in her head even as she did it) that Professor Quirrel might have been more suited to Muggle Studies instead of Defense Against the Dark Arts which he clearly did not have that much expertise in, so Hermione was head of the class again but even if there was practical work she suspected she’d beat Harry. Harry looked ill the whole lecture, positively sick, and his eyes never wavered from Quirrel. No, not Quirrel, the back of Quirrel’s head. It was like his eyes were magnetized to the spot, never leaving it for a second. It took Ron nudging Harry with a concerned expression for him to shake out of it and leave but even so he looked grim and well like an adult really.

The next time was Potions.

It wasn’t right away like it was in Defense, he walked in Ron Weasley laughing and talking about Quidditch like usual, no it didn’t happen until after Professor Snape had to do attendance. Hermione was sure that Professor Snape was an excellent professor, after all he had tenure at Hogwarts and had been hired, even if other students complained that he was a bit strict or harsh he couldn’t have been too awful. He read through the names normally but when he reached Harry’s he paused.

“Harry Potter, our newest celebrity.”

The way he pronounced celebrity, it was so cold, and deliberate Hermione hadn’t heard anything like it before and she found herself flinching in spite of the fact that the coldness wasn’t directed at her.

“Present.”

That was her first notice, Harry’s voice went cold, almost without inflection, turning to look at him from her seat in the front there was no real expression on his face and his eyes seemed distant as if he was thinking hard about something. He didn’t say anything else besides that.

After roll stopped Professor Snape started asking questions. Hermione had read all her text books multiple times and she had a very good memory but even so she recognized that Professor Snape was asking fairly obscure questions. Luckily she knew the answer to each and every one, she kept her hand high in the air, but for the first time so far she wasn’t called on at all. Professor Snape only called on someone, the same someone who so far had never raised his hand.

“Mr. Potter, where would I find a bezoar?”

“The stomach of a goat, sir.”

And so it went for several questions, Professor Snape’s mouth getting tighter with each correct answer and Harry’s answers becoming more curt and his eyes growing more distant as if he wasn’t in his head at all. Finally Harry seemed to snap, or at least, that’s how Hermione thought about it.

All of a sudden he was leaning in his seat and tilting his head looking very casual, as if he wasn’t being asked quite a few increasingly difficult questions by a professor, but his eyes seemed well… Hermione didn’t know quite how to describe it. They looked dark, and very cold, not like Harry’s eyes at all.

“Forgive me sir, but as much as I enjoy indulging your dramatic flair in this game of twenty questions potions style I do believe you have a class to teach.”

Professor Snape did not look pleased, not that Hermione blamed him, Harry had suddenly said something quite rude and to a teacher none the less.

“Talking back already, Potter? You’ll find that fame won’t serve you much here, detention.”

Harry didn’t talk the rest of class, wasn’t really called on again, but he still acted different than normal. He looked like he was just going through the motions, more so than any other class, like he had done this a thousand times and was only doing it now just to get it out of the way and not really to learn anything. It wasn’t until leaving Potions, Hermione scurrying out by herself and Harry heading out with Ron Weasley offering his condolences for the detention so early in the year, that Harry seemed to be back to Harry.

It was over so fast, one class period, that she thought she had imagined all of it.

But she hadn’t imagined it, she had been watching for it now, and she noted that it always happened in the same situations. Defense and Potions, every single time it would occur, and each time she’d make note of the symptoms.

She never told anyone about it, not that there was anyone to tell anyway, but she kept note and thought that even if she was all alone and Harry Potter was the best wizard in the school no matter how much she tried to catch up at least she knew part of his secret. Hermione Granger wasn’t fooled by whatever act he was pulling and somehow that made everything a little bit better.

* * *

_I'_ _ll remind you Harry that you did ask for my assistance, quite bluntly too if I might add._

Scrubbing cauldrons in detention with professor Snape in his first week of school Harry wasn’t quite sure he wanted to talk to Tom right then. It was true, he had asked for Tom’s help in Potions, but then maybe he should have known better.

Defense had done it, if Defense had never happened he would never have bothered. Tom was a person now, not just a voice in his head, he was distracted enough as it was. He would always be there for Harry, always a trace of him in Harry’s head, but in some ways Thomas Evans needed Tom too and Harry understood that. Harry didn’t want to take away Tom’s body from him, he knew what that meant to Tom the price they’d paid to get it in the first place, but even so Defense had been…

He had seen that thing before, whatever was in there, inside Quirrel he had seen it over three years ago floating outside of himself and staring back at him with no face a jagged horrific nothingness that consumed everything in its path. For a moment in that classroom he had been back there, confronting it, looking it in the face just like then as it looked back at him only it didn’t because how could it look if it didn’t have eyes?

If Ron hadn’t been sitting next to him, if he didn’t have to be Harry Potter Hogwarts student, Harry Potter who had friends and who looked like he lead a normal life with people (real people not notebooks) who liked him, he would have ran further than he could ever imagined and never looked back.

There was something in the back of Professor Quirrel’s head and it was eating him from the inside out and when it was finished with stuttering Quirrel it would eat the rest of them too.

No, even if he was this mysterious hero, even if he had somehow defeated that unnamed dark lord as a baby he would not confront that thing directly. He would not sit in its shadow every day and just wait for it to creep towards him with open jaws.

“I know you can possess me.” Harry said later to Tom in the dream world. He was pacing back and forth the world a blur of emotions and color as his panic still continued to grip him hours later, Tom sat a single island of stillness in the midst of everything, his eyes pale river stones, “I’ve known it for a while… I don’t really mind, I get it, I do get it even if…”

Tom said nothing merely brought his hands below his chin and rested his face in them staring off into the distance clearly thinking. They rarely talked about what happened to Dudley or anything about that month before Harry had left, there hadn’t ever been a reason to, but now there was.

“I need you to be there with me in Defense.” Harry finally said forcing himself to stand still and look Tom in the face, “I can’t be there with that thing alone.”

Tom said nothing for a moment, still perfectly still on the ground with crossed legs, looking like nothing could touch him and nothing ever would.

“What do you think it is?” He asked finally.

“I don’t know.” Harry said shaking his head, “I don’t want to ever be close enough to it that find out.”

So Tom had said yes. After that Tom’s weight became a lot more heavy in his head, like how it was when he was still in the notebook, he’d feel his thoughts churning as he spoke to Ron throughout the day or any time really. It wasn’t overbearing, like it had been sometimes before Tom had gotten a body, but he was more there than he had been in recent years.

Potions wasn’t like Defense but it was still hard. He’d heard a lot of awful things about Potions, mostly from Ron who was proving to be the best normal friend that Harry ever had, but he hadn’t been prepared for the memories it brought up. It was just like being in school with Dudley, handing in his work, and the teachers telling him he cheated. Professor Snape looked at him the same way the teachers had, seeing nothing more than a delinquent, without ever having really talked to him.

It had started with a traitorous thought, Tom could teach me potions if he really needed to, and that thought had turned into an idea and suddenly before he knew it Tom had consented and started using his mouth for him. Suddenly Harry was outside himself again, looking in, and watching as his body confronted Snape.

Even though it wasn’t really him, it was the not-Harry again, and that his chest ached when he saw it and thought of Tom he still couldn’t help but cheer him on in his place.

If only it hadn’t gotten him detention.

“Keep scrubbing, Potter.” Professor Snape said appearing out of nowhere behind Harry’s back when Harry had stalled in the scrubbing to wipe his eyes.

“Yes, sir.”

_Severus Snape merits watching, you’d never get a chance to do that if you were only in his class. I said it before and I’ll say it again, this man is dangerous._

Harry scrubbed harder as the implications came together, _You got me detention on purpose?!_

_Well,_ Tom’s thoughts lazily swirled in, _I hadn’t exactly planned on it but it does seem a good opportunity. He worked for the dark lord, you know._

Harry looked up at the man, his black stained robes, his greasy hair, but more importantly the look in his eyes. Tom’s eyes were hard like that, Harry’s too sometimes, those were eyes that people wore when they had seen terrible things.

_You think he knows his name?_

_I wouldn’t doubt it, I think most wizards know his name, it’s just considered an extreme faux pas to ask. Your friend, Ron Weasley, why don’t you try interrupting one of his spiels about quidditch and get him to tell you something useful?_

Tom didn’t like Ron very much, thought he was kind of stupid, which most people were when compared to Tom but Ron had some qualities that Harry really admired. Ron was just so normal, so real, he was the first real person to really try to be Harry’s friend like Harry was someone worth being friends with. Ron was his dorm mate and was the first person to really talk to him beyond being Harry Potter, at least that’s how it seemed to Harry. Since that first night they had become friends, real friends, and even if Ron talked a lot about quidditch Harry didn’t really mind. Ron didn’t like talking about the dark lord and Harry didn’t want to alienate Ron by asking what his name was, there’d be someone else to ask later.

Harry wasn’t sure Tom was right about Snape though. Sure the man could have been a Death Eater, that’s what the dark lord’s followers had been called, but Harry didn’t necessarily think the man was dangerous at least not to Harry. Right now Snape wasn’t even looking at him, was sitting at the desk reading books and pretending Harry wasn’t even there. Really it was almost like Snape wanted Harry to be stupid, like the Dursleys had wanted Harry to be stupid, and was very disappointed even angry when Harry proved that he wasn’t. The Dursleys had never been dangerous to Harry, no matter how much they disliked him at the end of the day it had been Harry who had ended up being dangerous to them.

_That was a very different situation, they were muggles and you were a wizard, to them you were born with a gun in your hands pointed at their heads. We all are._

But Harry, with chafing red hands scrubbing through cauldrons one after another, couldn’t quite believe that or wouldn’t. He might be Harry Potter, who in the wizarding world was something much different than he was in the muggle world, but that didn’t mean he had to believe things like that. He wouldn’t believe stuff like that unless he had to. Snape was just mean, didn’t like him particularly for some unknown reason, but he wasn’t dangerous. Not everyone who disliked him was dangerous.

(Sometimes the most dangerous people were the ones who liked you the most, like Tom.)

He really didn’t want to think about that, instead he kept scrubbing, and thought to himself and Tom that Tom better keep his mouth shut next time or Harry would make him do the detention instead.


	9. Chapter 9

Harry Potter had earned himself quite a few detentions within a very short amount of time, by the end of October he had scrubbed Severus cauldrons’ at least eight times, and while it reaffirmed Severus’ impression that even with his mother’s eyes he was more Potter’s brat than he was Lily’s son.

However, the situation was beginning to become unnerving.

When he looked at the boy he’d see either Lily’s eyes or James Potter’s hated arrogant face, it was very difficult to see anything else in him, perhaps it was simply that Severus wasn’t interested in seeing anything else. Potter was only significant in his miraculous defeat of the dark lord, his mother’s death, and an unfulfilled prophecy. By himself Potter was hardly a person, he was only a person in relation to those who had died for his survival.

Sometimes though, more recently, he saw someone else lurking behind Potter. He hadn’t seen it until the first class, before then Potter had hidden it behind more pleasant emotions, only when pressed by Severus’ questions did a mask in that cheerful golden boy’s mask begin to crack. He didn’t have the eyes of a little boy, he didn’t even have the eyes of the killer but rather something more ruthless and distant, they were cold and unwavering and they stared back at Severus as if he were only dirt under his boot.

Lord Voldemort’s eyes had not been like that, the man had been crazed by the time Severus had been inducted, there was always the hazy almost frantic expression in those unnatural crimson irises. He seemed unwound, always moving, always pacing and shouting and fingers twitching as if in withdrawal of some unknown substance. When he looked at his followers it was as if he couldn’t quite make them out, had somehow become near sighted and forgotten all their names, but it never seemed as if he particularly cared because to him they were all more or less worthless anyway.

No, when he thought about the way Potter stared at him now, silently and sometimes with a small smile he thought of the boy’s muggle uncle Thomas Evans.

The trouble was that the boy had a smart mouth; he’d somehow managed to be blessed with the art of cutting wit but little common sense, at least that’s how it seemed at first. On a weekly basis the boy deliberately undermined his authority, it was usually subtle comments, small little things but each one was a slight Severus found intolerable and soon enough he would reach his limit of deducting points and just assign the boy to the cauldrons again.

Then he’d noticed that the other students didn’t bother Potter for the point loss, according to the other professors Harry Potter was quite magically gifted and usually earned in their classes more than enough to cover whatever it was Severus had taken. More so the boy had a knack for using his reputation to his benefit, he didn’t appear to like it most of the time, but inside the classroom it very clearly became a case of the boy who lived versus all those who hated muggle borns and wished to see them dead. Any action Severus took against Potter then wasn’t blamed on Potter but rather on Severus who wished to see the good students of Hogwarts suffer.

One particular incident caught in his mind when he thought about this current trend. His godson, Draco Malfoy, had not yet realized that money could not buy you everything. Having been born the heir to the Malfoy family and possibly the Black family if the Blacks continued to be thrown in Azkaban or else disowned, he was brought up with the firm belief that the world catered to his father’s whims and that this connection would bring him anything he wanted. It was true, more or less, but Draco had not yet learned the art of being subtle.

Draco had approached Potter sometime early in the year and told him that he would go much further in life if he knew the right people. Potter hadn’t taken that comment particularly well as far as Snape had heard it.

Since then the two had something of a rivalry going on, it didn’t help that Potter was praised by all but Severus as being the most gifted student to attend Hogwarts in decades while Draco was simply told that he was ‘doing well’. Draco had started slow with mild insults in the hallway, things like Potty and Weasel, but then the insults had begun to become a little less mild, did you know your mother was a dirty mudblood. Severus had personally given the boy detention and deducted points after he heard that one, when Draco had been crying in front of his desk asking why he deserved detention from his godfather of all things Severus had told him that there were certain words you simply did not say.

It appeared to have reached something of a climax in one of his potions classes.

Draco was not stupid, he was young, he was spoiled, but he was hardly stupid. He’d realized that somehow words didn’t cut it with Potter, you had to dig deeper than that if you wanted him to flinch, so in a moment of sheer stupidity combined with desperation he turned towards Potter’s flawless academic record.

Potter was good at potions, but not brilliant, he followed the instructions with an efficiency that was quite remarkable but he did not invent or innovate as Severus once had when he was a student. He looked quite bored most of the time, yet still with that overriding intensity that caused even Weasley to hesitate talking to him in class. To Severus’ disappointment the boy had yet to turn in a single subpar potion that would allow him the satisfaction of telling Potter to his face that he was not as brilliant as he thought he was.

The Slytherins shared Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions with the Gryffindors but with the Defense class’ curriculum Draco must have realized that he’d only really get a chance to embarrass Potter in Potions.

He’d forgotten what they were brewing that day, something trivial enough for first year potions in the fall, and Severus remembered vaguely being distracted by Longbottom’s exploding cauldron. He didn’t see the moment in itself but when he turned in Potter’s hand there was a rather a rather volatile ingredient that hadn’t been involved in the day’s potions.

After a glance it was clear to everyone in the room that Draco had attempted to drop some unknown ingredient into Potter’s cauldron.

Potter stared at it as if he found the idea of it a trifle bit amusing and then those cold green eyes turned to Draco, “Really Malfoy, there are cleaner and more certain ways to destroy the future of magical Britain than this. Although I commend you, had your aim been a bit more accurate and your throw a bit faster then we would all be maimed if not dead.”

“Potter! Five points for speaking out of turn.” Severus had said, almost on instinct at this point, Potter just tilted his head continuing to observe Draco as if he was a specimen caught under a microscope.

“You know there’s something very odd about the way students are sorted in this school, take Slytherin for instance, did you notice that many of the most influential families only heirs are sorted into Slytherin? Did you notice that many of those heirs, you, me, Crabbe, Goyle, happen to be in our year? Sit them all down in a small room filled with volatile potions and well, it’s just so easy.”

He spoke softly but even so there was this energy when he spoke that made everyone turn and stop and listen. All eyes in the room were on him, and the wide eyes that were on all the children’s faces spoke to the fact that they were beginning to see Potter’s point.

“Harry, what are you...” The Weasley boy began but Harry held up a commanding hand in front of his freckled face, glancing down only for a moment with an expression that must have stunned Weasley into silence.

“Now,” Harry continued in a musing sort of way, “I don’t imagine that this would destroy the country overnight, but magical Britain is very small, after two wars as well as the random acts of mass terror here and there Hogwarts’ incoming class is… Well let’s just say there’s not that many truly pureblooded wizards left. Take out thirty of them, many of whom would inherit a Wizengamot seat or two at majority, and in twenty or thirty years those muggle borns you hate so much might have a real chance at gaining control of this country’s pathetic bureaucracy.”

Potter then turned to look at Severus and for a moment Severus saw, he wasn’t quite sure what he saw, only that it brought to mind the dark lord’s face on hearing the prophecy that he would be defeated by some child who had yet to be born.

“So tell me, professor, how many points does Malfoy lose for poorly planned homicide and general anarchy?”

Naturally he had given Potter detention for a week. It was after that class that he began to tally the amount of detentions that Potter had served. Some he had been foisted onto other professors to handle but the majority had been with Severus himself, scrubbing cauldrons, or else writing lines. In detention the boy hardly talked, it was almost as if he was an entirely different boy, he lost some of that knife’s edge that he had in class. He rarely spoke to Severus, a yes sir here or a no sir there, but he never volunteered anything. No, instead he watched, and Severus began to wonder if Potter wasn’t somehow landing himself in detention on purpose.

Severus had been monitoring the boy’s uncle. At Albus’ behest he’d noted the man’s hobbies, his interests, his work patterns, his acquaintances; everything that might prove later important was being recorded and noted by Severus. He wondered if the boy wasn’t doing the same for him. Not with magic as Severus was, but with his presence instead, as if being in the same room as Severus somehow allowed him to see all the weaknesses in the man.

He found himself unconsciously watching his actions in these detentions, thinking before each action if it was something he wanted Potter to see, and Potter would be scrubbing away with that silent efficiency at black cauldrons.

Albus had asked him what he thought of Potter at the beginning of the school year, and he had dismissively replied that the boy was an ignorant Gryffindor just like his father had been.

Looking back on that sorting ceremony though he remembered how long Potter had sat beneath the hat and he remembered thinking that generally only two types of students ended up in Slytherin these days, the heirs to noble and ancient pureblood houses, and abused children who saw no way out but ruthlessness and thinly strained patience. The boy had looked very pale and small on that stool with the hat over his eyes, and Severus’ knuckles turned white clenching his goblet, but then the boy was sorted into Gryffindor so clearly all was right in the world. It was only in retrospect that he allowed himself to wonder about what house Harry Potter was almost placed into.

However, while he disliked children as a general rule he was not unnerved by them, so until Potter did something a little more drastic than throwing cheap words in the air he’d still be little more than the miniature James Potter he presented himself as.

* * *

On the day that Hermione Granger almost died she confronted Harry Potter about his problem. She’d been content to keep it her little secret, something only she knew about the boy who lived, but then it seemed like he’d been pushing harder in Potions. It wasn’t talking back, Hermione had seen talking back, he was testing limits. It was almost methodical, he went a little further each day, seeing how far he could push Professor Snape before… Well Hermione didn’t know what would happen when he went past the limit.

Normally she’d be offended on the behalf of Professor Snape, no one should treat a professor with such disrespect, but there was something wrong with Harry. The way he went about it, the deliberation, the coldness, well it frightened her just a bit.

She had been sorted into Gryffindor not because she wanted to be brave and noble but because she was brave, that’s what the hat had said, so she realized that it would only be her who confronted Harry and no one else.

She found him in the library, he was there quite often, not as much as her of course because he had Ron Weasley to hang out with who hated the library but quite often he’d be in there with his own stack of books that clearly wasn’t for homework.

It was Halloween, and she tried to think that it didn’t mean anything to approach something scary on Halloween, and he was sitting in his own usual spot in the library looking a bit alarmed at the pile of books in front of him as if he wasn’t quite sure what they were doing there. Sometimes, she’d noted, he looked a bit dazed talking to Ron or just walking through the hallways as if he was listening to something else or wasn’t really there at all.

He didn’t seem to notice her at any rate because he picked up the top most book, flipped through it briefly, shook his head with an odd almost affectionate smile and began to read from the beginning.

“Ah, um, Harry.” She said taking the seat across from him trying not to blush at the awkwardness of the situation. She hadn’t talked to him since September on the train, at first she’d been too hurt, and then she just felt that she somehow couldn’t as if her opportunity had already passed.

“Oh, hi, Hermione or Granger I guess. How is it… How are things?” He set down the book gingerly not bothering to hold his place and looked at her with polite attentiveness.

“Oh I’m…” Well she wasn’t really fine because it was all sort of disappointing but that wasn’t why she was here, “Harry, have you noticed that you act very… weird in Potions?”

Some part of her had expected him to stare at her blankly, as if she was crazy, and she would stammer and try to leave without feeling too humiliated as if it was all just in her head. He didn’t look like that though, instead he looked a bit alarmed, and then he looked like he did in Potions.

It was a subtle shift, a narrowing the eyes, leaning back in his chair, and a very impressive poker face. It was as if she had been given a wordless confirmation of what she had always suspected but that was somehow almost worse than looking crazy.

“You’re a very smart girl, Hermione.” He distantly mused and somehow even though he said it without any real inflection behind it she felt her stomach flutter at the compliment, “I’m afraid our dear Professor Snape brings out the worst in me.”

“Quirrel too.” She added almost without thinking, this caused him to pause slightly and he began to stare at her more closely as if she was being reevaluated.

“Yes, but tell me, who doesn’t Quirrel bring the worst out of? He smells like a cheap Italian restaurant and the stuttering would drive anyone mad.” He gave her a smile that was at once as sly as it was charming and for a moment looking at his cool confidence she saw what her roommates meant when they said Harry was pretty.

“But tell me, Hermione, I didn’t think we were particularly close. Were you worried about me?” He asked looking at her the whole time but his voice a little bit harsher than it had been before. He was making fun of her, she knew it, and he was right they weren’t close. She had just thought they were for one wonderful horrible train ride.

Still, she was in Gryffindor, she was brave and noble and she could talk to Harry Potter without running from the room in tears. “Yes, you act scary in class, what you said to Malfoy the other day… It was just cruel Harry, that’s not like you.”

He seemed about to say something but then paused, some of the determination went out of his gaze and he seemed a bit tired, “No, it really isn’t, is it?” He sighed and picked up the book once again flipping back to the page where he had left off signaling to her that he was done with the conversation, “I am stunned by your powers of observation, Miss Granger, but I’m afraid I’ve missed the point of this little chat. Should you find some actual reason to speak to me I’ll be here all day and then I’ll be in Charms with you attempting to make a feather float. Until then, goodbye.”

That had not been the worst moment of the day, as she had expected it to be when she slumped out of the library. No, that had come in Charms. Like Harry had said earlier they were floating feathers, Harry seemed back to his old self like he was for everything but Potions and Defense. There was a moment where he was walking in, talking to Ron about Quidditch or something, that he looked at her and it seemed like he saw something but then he looked away and it was like Hermione didn’t exist anymore.

Why did she bother with it? She should just leave Harry alone since he didn’t seem to care if she existed either way.

Harry, like always, was the first to get it right and like always he got house points for it. Hermione was the only one who earned real points though, Harry just made up for what he lost in Potions.

Ron Weasley wasn’t having much luck though, but of course he was doing everything wrong, the wand motions, the pronunciation, everything about it was off so that the feather didn’t even twitch.

“I just need to get it…” Ron was saying to Harry. Harry for his own part shrugged, “I don’t know, I mean really the words and wand movements shouldn’t matter, you have to really want the feather to float.”

It had been a long day and seeing Harry there, disregarding everything their professors said, and acting like she didn’t exist made her snap, “Oh that’s simply the most wrong thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I’m sorry?” Harry asked looking somewhat bewildered but she continued regardless of both of their confused expressions.

“The wand movements, the words, that’s why it’s not working at all. Ron, it’s a swish then a flick, you have to do it from the wrists not just moving your hand and it’s _Wingardium Leviosa_ not _Wingardium Leviosaa._ ”

“Well, who asked you? She’s a nightmare honestly…”

He then turned back to his work and Harry as if she hadn’t said anything at all. Academics had been the one thing she had ever been respected for, people may not have liked Hermione but they knew she was smart, they knew that if they needed things done and understood you asked Hermione. Now though, with Harry, she’d replaced and instead she was a nightmare.

She’d asked professor Flitwick if she could go to the bathroom and then she’d walked briskly out of the classroom and tried not to think of anything long enough that she could find some place to go hide and just sit down and cry.

She didn’t know how long she stayed in there, feet curled up on the seat of the toilet, but it was long enough to think that everything was a mistake to think that maybe she should have just stayed a muggle like her parents secretly wanted. It was certainly long enough to wonder why, why it was so hard for her to make friends and so easy for others.

She had expected some other girl to come in and kick her out at some point, to tell her to stop crying but it hadn’t been a girl. It had been the person she least expected.

Harry Potter’s voice rang clearly throughout the empty bathroom reaching her in the stall, “Of all the places to wallow in pity what I can’t understand is why anyone would pick a bathroom. You’ll get a reputation if you keep going like this.”

She opened the door faster than she thought possible and wiped the tears from her eyes, “Harry, you can’t be here this is the girl’s room!”

She knew without even having to really look that this was Potions Harry again, and not the Harry from class, Potions Harry was much surer of himself than the normal Harry. At her words he just raised his eyebrows and motioned to the room, “Well here I am, so clearly I am capable of walking into the girl’s restroom.”

She must have looked terribly pathetic then, her eyes puffy and swollen, her face red still trying to hold in the remaining tears, “What are you doing here?”

“I was feeling a bit generous. Don’t look so concerned, it doesn’t happen often.”

He seemed nicer than he usually was in potions, and even in the library. Not like he cared, he acted like it was a whim to barge in the bathroom and listen to her sob, but he wasn’t as biting as before. He hadn’t commented on her appearance or anything else about her yet.

“You shouldn’t be in here, you’ll get in trouble.” She said wiping at her face again to catch any of those still leaking tears.

He walked over and leaned against the stall so that he was standing across from her, he wasn’t much taller than her and was a bit thinner, but the casual way he held himself made him seem so much older than her.

“One of the truly great things about my system, Hermione, is that I’m so booked with detentions by professor Snape that I rarely have time for another and if I lose a house point or two there’s always a way to make those up.” He gave her a reassuring smile at the end and she couldn’t help her own slight smile and small giggle at the comment. She hadn’t realized that Harry was funny.

“So tell me, Hermione, what brings a girl like you to a wretched place like this?”

The giggle became a laugh, one she desperately wanted to stop because he shouldn’t be here and he was part of the reason she was here. She tried to control herself, to get back some of the anger and sorrow and frustration but it was slipping away.

“I don’t have any friends.” She finally blurted the words gushing out of the floodgates, “Everyone hates me, or doesn’t even know I exist, and I study so hard but I’m still only second best.”

“Ah, I see.” He said nodding slightly before pausing and then continuing in that musing voice, “I never had friends.”

She was startled by this, “You’re friends with Ron though…” Not that he should be, Ron was such a prat.

“I am hardly friends with Ron Weasley.” He sneered before muttering, “I just think I am because it’s so bloody convenient.”

She wasn’t sure she understood that and even though Ron was a prat she didn’t think he should be pushed aside like that but Harry continued, “Humans are not defined by their friends or their fathers for that matter. Clinging to the idea that other people will make you happy is not only shortsighted but also rather foolish. You are the most constant thing you will ever have in your life, live for yourself and people will be drawn like moths to the flame.”

“Is that what you do?” She asked, because she didn’t believe that, not the normal Harry maybe this Potions Harry but not the normal one.

“Of course, people have accused me of many things but hypocrisy, I’m afraid, is not one of my sins.”

“So what now then?” She asked, because even though she felt better she was still friendless and alone, like she had been when she came into the bathroom in the first place.

“Now, now Hermione Granger, you walk out of the bathroom trying not to look like a complete mess and try not to wallow in your rather shallow eleven year old misery.”

Perhaps it was meant to be inspiring but all it did was make her smile slightly, seeing his hand gesturing to the door as if the world was waiting for her out there, “You’re not very good at comforting people, are you?”

He blinked at that, as if surprised he would be told he wasn’t good at anything, “Well, this is my second attempt at this sort of thing so it isn’t as if I’ve had much practice.”

For a moment there he had almost seemed normal, better than normal really, smart and funny and concerned in the way that no one else in the school seemed to be. Standing there, looking at him, she wondered why she had ever been frightened of this aspect of Harry’s personality.

Neither of them had expected the troll. One moment they had been standing in the girl’s bathroom, the girl’s bathroom of all places, her looking like a crazy mess and him looking perfect and then the wall caved in and she was screaming.

It seemed both fast and slow in the same instant, seeing its leering face and hearing the dragging of its club, and her brain somehow uselessly rattling off that this was a troll and if only they had some sunlight they’d be alright. Without thinking she found herself clinging to Harry, trying to move him back into the corner with her, but he wouldn’t move. In that slow-fast bubble they were caught in, where the sink was broken and water was spraying everywhere, he was so terribly still and focused. There were no words, no wand movements even, just a flash of brilliant light and then troll just wasn’t there anymore as if it hadn’t existed in the first place.

They stood there, Hermione shaking and clinging, and him standing sweat beginning to drip from his brow as their shoes got thoroughly soaked. Finally, he said in a dry voice, “I hate trolls.”


	10. Chapter 10

Harry felt as if things were moving too fast again like they had when he was only eight years old with a notebook that was his only friend. He’d felt as if the world was rushing past him and even though he’d seen it fly by it had been too fast for him to chase.

Hogwarts was a bit like that, it seemed, rushing past him with all the force of a hurricane.

Tom was acting oddly, that was half of it.

After Tom had transformed into Thomas Evans, had taken them to a small apartment in London, and collapsed on the bed in shivering exhaustion leaving Harry to stand there and just stare at him Harry had realized that he barely knew Tom at all. Before then Tom had been a concept, an idea, but not a person with a history and a past and connections to the real world. For Harry, even though he knew Tom had once been a person, Tom belonged in that dream world of the notebook as if he had lived there forever. Tom wasn’t human, and it was easier to accept that fact than it was to accept that Tom had once been human.

In that first week, where Tom could barely function and stay awake, when they’d closed all the blinds and Tom had just sat there gripping himself and trying to focus on his thoughts rather than the room, Tom had told Harry a little bit about himself. Small facts, the things Harry would have known if they’d ever done real small talk. Tom went to Hogwarts in 1938, he’d been introduced to the wizarding world by a powerful wizard named Albus Dumbledore who had lit his wardrobe on fire to prove a point, he was a half-blood but had thought for a long time that this made a world of difference, and he hated the family he had only had the pleasure of meeting for a few hours. Harry had sat across from him on the floor in the dark, just listening to all of this, and wondering what to make of this shaking man in front of him.

In the end Harry decided that he knew Tom, the notebook Tom, better than anyone else. It was the human façade of Thomas Evans and to a lesser extent the past Tom Riddle that he questioned. Thomas Evans was a person in his own right, not just a vehicle for Tom as Harry had originally assumed he was. They were similar enough that it was difficult to tell at times but Thomas Evans had his own human habits, hobbies, and practical thoughts that the metaphysical Tom had lacked.

Thomas Evans was perfectly content to live on cheap take-out Thai, Vietnamese, Greek, Chinese, Indian, and basically anything that wasn’t British food. Thomas Evans wore his poverty not quite like a badge of honor but certainly nothing worthy of shame. He had a critical eye for films but was willing to watch the ones he deemed as atrocious without too much complaint.

All these things, these actions, had seemed far too human to belong to Tom himself. Tom was the overarching spirit, spread evenly between Harry’s consciousness and Thomas Evans, he belonged to them both in the end.

So Harry wouldn’t claim to know all facets of Tom or Thomas Evans but he could say that Tom was acting odd. It was almost as if he was restless, pulled back into Hogwarts again it was as if he had woken from dozing and felt the need to do some unknown task, Harry could almost hear him pacing inside his head.

He didn’t trust Snape, that was for sure. Every day in Potions he took over and it became a match of wills between him and the Potions professor. Harry had thought, at first, it was to find some information on the dark lord or to see if Snape still wanted to hurt Harry because he had worked for the dark lord but Tom wasn’t looking for anything like that. No, he wasn’t looking for any details at all, instead he just pushed and prodded and waited for something to happen.

_Just mapping out the mine field, Harry._

It was like they were all on edge just waiting for something to explode.

Harry just wished it wasn’t getting him so many detentions. 

As for Quirrel, Tom didn’t know what was going on there, or at least nothing he would concretely tell Harry. Sometimes Harry got the feeling that Tom had ideas about things, as if he had a good guess as to what something was, but he’d be unwilling to commit until he saw more proof. Quirrel was one of  those things, the dark lord had been another, and Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about that either.

Whatever was wrong with Quirrel they both felt it, that echoing feeling of dread in both of their skulls, pounding away and that ever increasing temptation to run as far and as fast as he could in the other direction. And underneath that, in Tom’s mind, there had been a terrible flash of almost-recognition a half thought _Oh God, no…_ and then nothing more.

_For now_ , Tom had said, _we’ll keep an eye on him and stay our distance._

So already their attention was divided between two people, Snape, and Quirrel.

Then things began to change again, the restlessness started, and he could feel Tom’s twitching fingers that searched for something unknown. As Thomas Evans he began research, first in the realm of ordinary muggle physics, but then a bit further flashes here and there caught in Harry’s mind when he peered into Tom’s thoughts. He didn’t know specifically what Tom was doing with these things, only that it was to distract him from things he didn’t want to think about, whatever those things might be.

Then the oddest thing of all had happened, Hermione Granger.

To be honest after the train and meeting Ron Hermione had faded for him. He’d thought about talking to her that first week or so but then she’d looked mad at him, or like she was snubbing him, and he hadn’t thought about approaching her since. He did sometimes catch her watching him, with a speculative look in her eye, but with Snape and Tom’s battles raging and Quirrel he hadn’t thought Hermione needed watching.

Hermione was very smart though. Tom had said that Harry was magically gifted, and Harry guessed that was true after all the classes, but Hermione knew everything. Almost like Tom, and it always seemed like she was learning more, always in the library with her head in a book that only Tom would think of reading.

Sometimes Harry felt like everyone knew about Tom, he was so obvious at times, so very not Harry but it turned out everyone was only Hermione Granger.

When she first approached him, no them, in the library he’d felt a sharp stab of focus from Tom and for a moment he’d wondered if Hermione would become a more defenseless version of Snape; something that needed to be taken care of.

But Tom hadn’t done anything like that, instead he’d sent her off without answers, and when she’d walked briskly from Charms on the brink of tears he’d done something even more bizarre. He stared after her after they left Charms, and said to Harry, _It’s a rather sad day, Harry, when I prove to have more of a moral compass than you._

And for a moment Harry had felt ashamed but above all that he was thoroughly confused as Tom hijacked his body and calmly walked them to the girl’s restroom. He had watched them talked, standing outside of himself once again, and looking at the pair of them he found that he couldn’t see Harry or Tom in that stranger speaking to Hermione Granger.

Only when the troll had appeared and Harry had rushed back and sent it elsewhere, into the void of non-existence, did he manage to shake that feeling of being lost in the dark without a single sign to guide him.

After the troll Harry and Hermione were friends, but not, because in the end it was Tom and Hermione who were friends with Harry as the medium communicating between them. Suddenly she was everywhere, included like she belonged, and Ron was fuming because Hermione the know it all book worm was with them all the time and there was nothing Harry felt he could do about it.

He felt like he was clinging to Ron and losing him all in the same moment because Ron was something of his and not Tom’s not whatever this thing was with Hermione that he didn’t understand. He found he liked Hermione, she was like a brighter softer version of Tom, but even so he couldn’t be friends with something he didn’t understand.

It was not dark yet, as it had been in those early days when Tom was only a notebook that dreamed, but he knew that with the swift winds the storm clouds always followed. It was all spiraling out of control and he felt like there was nothing he could do about it and still much more to come.

* * *

He remembered teaching Harry some of the more theoretical basis for magic. They’d been in the park during high summer beneath the blue sky and the green trees after those first shaky months. Sitting on the grass and feeling the wind in his hair and his eyes closed if only for a moment Tom had remembered wondering how he had ever taken the act of living for granted.

Still wandless but somehow unhindered Harry had moved forward with a determination that had not faded with the death of his cousin. Magic was still sacred to him, still burning from his fingertips and the world around them, to them magic was almost more necessary than life itself.

Harry seemed to be adapting, he smiled more than he had in those first few months, and when he looked at Tom there was no longer that jagged fear in his eyes. Slowly but surely he was coming back to himself just as Tom was growing used to the sensation of being Thomas Evans and the sky above them seemed so very blue.

“Transfiguration,” Tom remembered saying, “Is the art of taking something and turning it into anything else. It is hindered only by the imagination of the caster, the refusal to associate certain objects with others, because in the end most matter is similar enough to temporarily be persuaded into some other form.”

Harry had nodded silently, he’d done transfiguration before, and Tom had been shocked to find how easily it came to Harry but then realized that Harry was in some ways more familiar with the idea of transition than most humans would ever be. His only friend was a human who had turned himself into a notebook who had then proceeded to turn himself into the idea of a man; Harry was witness to constant transmutation.  

In Harry’s eyes the needle was already a matchstick and the matchstick already a needle, it had only to remember that it wore another form when no one was looking.

“I think I know that.” Harry said, not the snapping of a frustrated child but rather a quiet musing, pondering ideas that drifted through their mutual consciousness. In Harry’s mind Tom saw a vision of all matter, caught in one form only for an instant, a single snapshot of time before drifting into an infinite number of forms. Nothing was in its final state, Harry was thinking, everything is in transition always.

Tom remembered wondering when Harry had become so profound.

“Yes, I think you know it too.” Tom said more to himself than to Harry but the words were spoken aloud at any rate so they might take wing in the air.

“So do most wizards get stuck on things like that?” Harry asked, picking up a blade of grass and watching as it twisted and writhed in his hand to take all manner of forms.

“Most wizards lack creativity and the ability to think so abstractly.” Tom said with a wry smile thinking back on his own youth and their instruction in Transfiguration.

Harry pondered that for a few moments silently, “You said they have to use wands and words to say spells, right?”

“It’s the medium for most magical societies, yes.” Tom had responded. He had not known that when he was human, he’d taken the wand as a given; a necessary tool to complete the more difficult and subtle skills that could not be accomplished with thought alone. It had not been until he’d returned with magic seeming so inherent to himself that he wondered if there weren’t other ways to go about it. Some of their trips to Diagon Alley hadn’t been for Harry but rather for Tom himself and books on foreign cultures that had been left almost forgotten.

“I just wonder why, I’ve never thought I needed anything, and you don’t seem to need anything either. Magic just is, it’s everywhere, so I don’t understand why you need anything at all.”

Now, three years later, when the universe seemed stretched before him but with no set path to take he looked back on those words and wondered why he had dismissed them with only a little thought. What was magic, the wand the words, what was so integral about them that it allowed it to work?

With his increase of knowledge in muggle academia, in grading physics problem sets over cheap coffee, this question would grow in his mind until it seemed as if there was little else. Why did the universe demand that a stick be waved and a few words be said? Why did it demand pictures drawn in chalk and chanted summons? The universe was neither benign nor malignant, it was wordless matter and energy and things that were neither, it was indifferent to language and yet somehow like invisible levers or switches these words and movements pulled and pushed so that some as of yet to be named force responded.

At some point late at night, his mind drifting with Harry’s as he flipped through late night television channels, it came to him. It’s software, he thought, it’s a programming language. And there it was, the answer he had never realized, so simple and absurdly muggle all in the same instant.

He didn’t know who or when but someone thousands of years before had created a list of commands, swishes, flicks, words, all strung together that could be used to form spells. They had provided the framework to make a spell, to use basic fundamental spells already written, and leave it in such a way that a magic user didn’t have to understand magic at all only to use the basis they already had.

So that by 1938 in Hogwarts, when an eager young Tom Riddle took his classes, they mistook language for the idea in and of itself.

Why not redesign it? Why not replace that old, tired, and frankly overused Latin base with plain and simple English? Why not remove the breakable wand and replace it with a myriad of simple hand gestures?

It was as if there had been light, pouring out of his mind in that single instant, and suddenly Thomas Evans was more than just a disguise to hide the fact that he was no longer Tom Riddle. There was purpose again, more so than simply living through Harry Potter at Hogwarts, and he nearly laughed with relief. He had not realized how desperate he had been.

Of course Harry still needed him, and he found it strange that he did not resent but rather welcomed that fact. Harry and he still belonged even with Hogwarts between them. There was something lurking in Hogwarts though, something malignant showing itself so blatantly it was as if it was holding a sign, “Here There Be Monsters” and Tom could not find himself happy that Harry was trapped in that lion’s den.

Severus Snape was proving to be more in control than he appeared, his temper simmered and in spite of the hatred in his eyes when he stared at Harry he had yet to make any real move, but his eyes were always burning.

Every time he entered that class in Harry’s thoughts he became more and more convinced that not only was the man dangerous he also did not mean Harry well. He had Tom Riddle’s look in his eyes, that flat contempt that stared back and spoke of years of fraying patience, and eventually Tom Riddle had set loose the basilisk.

He suspected the man was working for someone, the dark lord’s memory, or else Dumbledore someone who was actively telling him to stay his hand and not strike no matter how provoked. His stillness spoke of vision, of planning, of being a pawn in someone else’s game that would one day come to fruition. Tom found that he did not like the idea of Severus Snape being bound in puppet strings, it did not make things any less dangerous, merely more complicated.

And in Quirrel, in stuttering Quirinus Quirrel he suspected he found what had become of Tom Riddle and subsequently Lord Voldemort.

The first time he had joined Harry in Defense, had looked across to the man in front of the room, he had known exactly what Harry had been describing. There had been nothing in him, only the twisted and warped recreation of a man eating at the back of own his head like a cancer, and staring at him Tom felt as if he was staring back into that dread heart of the notebook. Tom knew a soul fragment when he saw one, horcruxes had allowed him that much. There had been a hideous moment of recognition, of seeing himself staring at Quirrel in the form of Harry Potter, and there had been no time for rationalization only horror as he thought, so this is what became of me.

He tried, later, to find of ways that it wasn’t Voldemort that it was some other nameless thing, some Cthulhu mythos creeping around in Quirrel’s head and there were many but he just kept coming back to that nauseous feeling of recognition seeping through his very soul.

Every time he went to that cursed class the feeling only grew until he could no longer deny that he was staring at himself. A version of him without body, with mind fraying, and he remembered that a certain dark lord’s body had been lost with the attempted murder of one Harry Potter.

In the end he hadn’t needed proof because it seemed as if he had known it all along.

So he distracted himself with this new project so that he could tell himself that Voldemort and he had parted ways long ago and that these things no longer mattered, so that he could tell himself that he didn’t have to warn Harry until it was necessary, that he didn’t have to tell him that the thing in Quirrel’s head that had murdered his parents and attempted to murder him was and was not Tom.

It was easier to pretend such things as horcruxes didn’t exist, the world seemed less complicated without the inclusion of doppelgangers, but even so there was a shadow steadily growing over Hogwarts and all his tinkering and revolutionizing magic could not hide that fact.

Here there be monsters, and their names are Hogwarts faculty.

But the game of chess involved taking turns and Tom could not play all their moves for them, sometimes you had to wait, to push and prod and watch where the chips fell before you moved in for the kill. The notebook had taught him patience on that level at the very least.

Besides, tormenting Snape did hold a certain appeal.

* * *

Things seemed so much easier now that she was friends with Harry, or one of the Harrys, after a while she became convinced that there were two of him at the end of the day.

In Potions he’d begun partnering with her, telling Neville to work with Ron for a while without much explanation, and she’d been thrilled. She usually had to concentrate quite hard in potions, it was an exact art and there was little room for error, but Harry could always hold a conversation more than that he was very funny. He had an observation for everything and it seemed to Hermione that he had thought about everything, sometimes it made her feel slow and stupid, but he didn’t patronize or hold it against her. That was only one of the Harrys though.

The other Harry wasn’t as kind even though she suspected that he was a kinder person in general. She had a feeling that the other Harry, the normal Harry, wasn’t quite sure what to make of her and her relationship to him. He held nothing against her but sometimes when he looked at her or talked to her there was an awkwardness that shouldn’t have been there and a wariness in the corner of his eyes.

She felt that the longer she was around him though the more he came to accept her presence and she felt that one day she might be friends with him as well.

She knew that she would never be friends with Ron Weasley. Maybe if they’d met under different circumstances, if he had gone with Harry to fight the troll, but he hadn’t and now it was too late. To him it must have seemed odd, leave class one day and come back and suddenly Hermione Granger is everywhere, but even so he could have at least tried. His temper was becoming shorter and shorter until he would turn and walk out of a room at her mere presence.

This always upset Harry, the normal Harry, she had a feeling that her Harry didn’t like Ron all that much.

The first time this happened Harry had stared after Ron with such a feeling of abandonment and terror that Hermione had found herself saying words she couldn’t have meant, “You can chase after him, you know, I don’t mind.”

He had said nothing for a while, just staring after Ron, and then he turned back to her and shook his head, “It’s not that easy.”

When she asked the other Harry’s opinion on the matter he’d been rather blunt about it, they’d been sitting in the library and she’d been listening to him as he explained what he considered some of the more complex but fundamental properties of Transfiguration. He always talked with his hands when he spoke of magic, they lifted like little pale birds, and then began to dance in circles fluttering here and there with his points.

“You see, Hermione, think of matter as not having one solid constant form but rather being in constant flux. All objects are subject to change, even in normal reality you can see this with the influence of time, but take a step back from that frigid frame and remember that matter is really just atoms whose location is only probable, that are waves and particles in the same instant, and you realize that Transfiguration is not the art of changing one thing to another but rather the choosing of an infinite amount of abstract forms.”

None of what he ever said was in her books, especially when he used words like matter, particles, waves, light, and atoms but all the same she felt she could trust what he said as if he really knew what he was talking about. When he was the other Harry, the Harry who was her friend, he never faltered or looked as if he lacked confidence so she couldn’t help but believe him.

She’d hated to interrupt him, she always did when he was like that, but it had been bothering her for some time, “Are you worried about Ron?”

The smile had dripped off his face and at once he looked both tired and frustrated, “Oh, Weasley, not particularly. Don’t tell me you’re concerned.” His eyes surveyed her sharply, looking somewhat alarmed by the idea, as if he was dreading having to convince her of his opinions.

“Has he talked to you yet? I know he’s mad because… Well because we’re friends but…”

He sighed, “Children, really, remember what I said about friendship the other day? Maybe not there was a troll in the bathroom at the time. Friendship is not the end all be all of my existence, if Ron Weasley can’t learn to share nicely then he can go off by himself and sulk if that makes him feel better. I will not waste my time pandering to the masses to help boost their self-esteems.”

It was more complicated than that though, even Hermione could recognize that. Things had been more than a little strained between the three (four) of them. She and Harry would be in the library but then Ron would appear and Harry would disappear somewhere with him or she would arrive behind Ron and Harry and suddenly Harry would switch to his other self and leave Ron standing there in the hallway. It was like they were splitting Harry between them and one of those days he was going to teeter towards one or the other; and maybe it was just wishful thinking but Hermione thought she might be winning their game of tug of war.

Something did have to give though; even Hermione knew that.

The beginning of the end came a little before Christmas when Harry’s latest detention had been allocated to Mr. Filch rather than professor Snape. That had been happening recently, Harry receiving detention from professor Snape but serving it elsewhere in the castle, Hermione wasn’t quite sure what to make of it but she had this feeling that professor Snape wasn’t entirely comfortable around Harry. She’d mentioned this to Harry at one point, the Harry that was her friend, and he had just grinned that scary smile he’d had in class and said he had no idea what she was talking about. So sometimes even when professor Snape gave Harry detention Harry would serve it with someone else.

Hermione had met up with him the next day and she was surprised to find that it was the regular Harry that was speaking to her and not the Harry from Potions class. He told her, almost hesitantly, about his adventures the night before how he had been cleaning the statues on the second floor but somehow got lost and found himself on the third. Hermione very clearly remembered the Headmaster stating that a certain corridor on the third floor boded certain death for all who entered.

“There was this three-headed dog, Hermione, on top of a trap door. I think Dumbledore’s hiding something here, something dangerous.”

She wanted to say that it was none of their business, that they had been told not to go so they should respect the professors’ authority but at the same time she already felt that it had been a long year and in the back of her head she knew that Harry was asking her and not Ron to investigate with him and that this might prove the winning blow. This was somehow important, more important than it should have been, and Hermione knew that she couldn’t afford to be friendless like the other Harry apparently could.

So she agreed to go with him to meet the giant Hagrid who was known for keeping unusual magical creatures as pets and who had apparently known Harry as a baby. The whole time though, she wondered why he had come to her, and what it might mean if they found anything out at all.

If she had learned anything from mystery novels it was that poking in other people’s business usually did have consequences. Something was going to come out of this and Hermione wasn’t entirely sure she liked that idea.


	11. Chapter 11

On the way to Hagrid’s she decided to ask Harry a question. It was snowing outside and so far they had been walking to Hagrid’s hut at the edge of the Forbidden Forest in silence. She wasn’t sure if there was anything to say, she didn’t want to ask why he hadn’t invited Ron to go with them or what it was that Harry thought Dumbledore was hiding and why he didn’t like the idea of it, but at the same time she didn’t like not knowing either. It made her feel young and small, more so even than the moments where she’d talk to the other Harry, her friend Harry, and realize that he knew so much more about everything than her. Harry was one of those people that just sucked you in, like the wind he just blew through everything seemingly unaffected by anything but uprooting the rest of them and leaving them trailing in his wake.

She’d once asked him how he felt about being the boy who lived. She knew it was a complicated question when he turned to regard her with more serious evaluating eyes. She’d seen her Harry use his reputation quite frequently, it was a clear case of us versus them in potions, but the normal Harry seemed reluctant to touch it as if ignoring it might make it all go away. For both of them being the boy who lived was more than just being in a book or two.

“The boy who lived, Hermione.” He’d said finally after a lengthy pause, “is an idea, nothing human. Ideas, I believe, are something like gods. They can be quite powerful and insubstantial in the same moment and they are only as strong as they are worshiped. Wizarding Britain has made a messiah out of the boy who lived but we’ll see how long these words upholding his reputation last.”

She wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, if he accepted being the boy who lived or not, but walking with him to Hagrid’s with only a trail of footprints behind them she wondered if she wasn’t grasping at the edges of what he said. As if there was some difference between being an idea and being human.

Still, the silence was overwhelming.

“You said Headmaster Dumbledore was hiding something, right?” She asked he turned to look at her with raised eyebrows but a somewhat amused expression.

“Dumbledore is always hiding something; I think he enjoys playing the role of his own secret keeper. This time I think he’s hiding something a little more sinister than ambition, history, and political schemes.” A half almost smile tugged at the corner of his lips but he didn’t laugh and she could tell he was thinking about something else rather than her.

“Do you distrust Headmaster Dumbledore? He seems… eccentric but nice, and I’m sure they wouldn’t let him run a school if he was doing something bad that could hurt us.”

This time there was a short bark of laughter, “Eccentric but nice, like a grandfather, right Hermione? Oh, he has gotten good, I’ll give him that. As for the school letting dangerous men around their children, look around.” He held up a hand and began counting off pale fingers, “We have Severus Snape the ex-Death Eater who makes children cry on an almost daily basis, our dear friend Hagrid who was expelled for the raising of a man eating spider which petrified several students and killed one, and don’t even get me started on Quirrel.”

“Professor Quirrel?” She asked wondering how the nervous, stuttering, and frankly timid man had managed to make its way onto the other Harry’s list of dangerous professors.

“As I said don’t even get me started on Quirrel.” He said rather drily, “Besides, these are all men without Dumbledore’s overwhelming political influence. It would take quite the scandal to have Dumbledore removed as headmaster.”

He looked so calm when he said that, as if it didn’t influence him at all, as if these were easy things to accept that you couldn’t always trust authority and look up to the teachers. Hermione had never felt that way.

“You really think something is dangerous in the corridor?” Hermione asked after a pause.

“We were told that we would be met with certain death if we wandered down the wrong path.” Again that dry unconcerned tone, as if certain death was not truly a thing he had to worry about but rather something to be taken almost as a joke.

“Should we be looking into it though, I mean, Harry we’re just first year students and we have our studies and…”

He didn’t cut her off just continued to look at her until she fell silent, the words dying on her tongue, and finally he said, “As the boy who lived it almost seems to be my destiny to meddle in the affairs of great wizards, it would be a disappointment to everyone involved if I didn’t at least try to look into things.”

Sometimes she had the feeling that she didn’t understand Harry at all, the normal Harry, or this Harry that spoke to her more often. She only caught glimpses of him, like snapshots, that she could store in her head and look at later as if piecing together the thoughts of a character in the story. There was more to it than he was saying, certainly more to it than just being the boy who lived, but looking at his face at the spark in his green eyes and later in normal Harry’s smile she didn’t know what it was.

She supposed that’s what was bothering her the most, why had she been asked to come, why were they looking into things at all, why had he looked to her rather than Ron or anyone else to come with him? There were so many questions resounding in her head and she couldn’t seem to fit any of them into words.

What had struck her the most was that it had been the Harry that was friends with Ron, the normal Harry who smiled like he meant it, who had approached her and even though she was walking with the other Harry now she knew that somehow they were both in agreement over this whatever this was and she had no idea how it had happened.

Somehow Hermione was winning against Ron without even knowing why.

“Harry, I wanted to thank you for asking me to come but… Why isn’t Ron here?” Before she could even finish the question she heard him sigh as this Harry always did when she brought him up.

“Amazing, how even without his presence it seems as if Weasley is standing right next to us.” He noted drily, “Hermione, I’m beginning to think you have some tortured love affair with Ron Weasley that demands you ask me about him. This, along with sobbing by yourself in the girl’s restroom, is another way to gain a fantastic reputation.”

It had been building up for a while, this conversation on the way to Hagrid’s, building up inside her until it seemed as if it was bursting from her without thought for consequence. Every time he reached out for her instead of Ron, partnered with her in Potions, or just talked to her in the common room she could feel these questions burning in her head, “You were friends with Ron first though! Even though we met on the train you were friends with him!”

He regarded her at first rather coolly but then something in his eyes seemed to soften and he looked tender if somewhat tired, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I have never been friends with Ron Weasley. I just think that I am because it’s too convenient to not be and I am desperate for relationships that are less meaningful than they appear to be. In a few months you have a better grasp of my inner workings than Weasley seems capable of fathoming, before even speaking with me you saw what no one else seemed to note, and that more than time or cheery conversations forms a relationship. Besides I could never be friends with someone that enamored of an idiotic game like Quidditch, please.”

“Are you just using Ron, then?” She asked right before they reached Hagrid’s door. He paused before knocking on the dark wood, just looking at her as if considering her, but that softness hadn’t left his expression. It was as if he knew that even as she said Ron’s name she was really asking if he was just for some unfathomable reason using her instead.

“No, only in the sense that all humans use each other for intrinsic benefits, and if you count that as manipulation then I’m afraid we are all quite guilty.” With that he smiled, “Believe me Hermione, when I use people as you so eloquently put it, it’s quite clear to everyone involved.” 

* * *

Hagrid had been surprised by their visit, his, Hermione’s and Tom who was hidden away inside Harry’s head, but he’d been happy. He talked about how he’d been friends with Harry’s dad and even Harry’s mom later, he talked about all of Harry’s dad’s friends, and he talked about the last time he’d seen Harry and carried him in his arms to leave him safely at the Dursleys.

Harry should have felt happy, to hear all these things about his parents, about his parents alive and happy and young but all he could think was that this giant smiling man was one of the people who had left him on that doorstep all those years ago.

Harry wasn’t often bitter, it wasn’t in his nature, he wasn’t like Tom; he couldn’t hold onto the fire of anger and keep it burning in his heart for all eternity. The Dursleys though were always a mixed bag, he and Tom rarely talked about them anymore, but he found whenever they did come up Harry could never predict quite what he was going to feel.

He often wondered what would have happened had he never met the Dursleys at all, but then, if he had not met the Dursleys how would he have met Tom? Somehow, even on the days when he doubted the most, he had always felt that it was necessary that he meet Tom.

Hermione must have thought something was weird, she was giving him looks, she did that sometimes and again he couldn’t help but reminded of a softer, kinder, altogether more human version of Tom. She seemed to see everything so clearly, as if it wasn’t hidden at all, but was right there in front of her.

_Why do you like her so much?_

He had felt more than seen Tom’s eyebrows raise in that moment, the Tom in his head who was still as dark haired as ever, _Am I not allowed to like people? I didn’t realize being a sociopath had so many unwritten expectations, I’ll have to look them up._

_That’s not what I mean and you know it!_

Tom didn’t like people, even Thomas Evans didn’t like people, he couldn’t connect with them and in many ways he couldn’t understand them at all. Harry knew that Tom liked him, but it was a subtle sort of liking, something that wasn’t said but was just seen. He knew that it wasn’t as strong with Hermione, like Hermione was just this passing thing, a curiosity that can be picked apart for the time being but even so Tom didn’t like people. Somehow though, inconceivably, he liked Hermione Granger.

It had been Tom who insisted he take Hermione Granger rather than Ron or even both of them when they went to see Hagrid.

_She looks like she’d dying for a good mystery, and trap doors usually indicate mystery, besides between her and Weasley she’s less likely to blurt something idiotic and get us thrown out before we learn anything useful. Weasley has his uses but strangely enough I doubt having a good poker face and knowing when to stay quiet is one of them._

Harry had almost refused, almost brought Ron instead, but then something had stopped him. It already seemed as if it was too late, he couldn’t see Ron in that meeting, digging through secrets that were more Tom’s than Harry’s. Ron belonged to Harry and never to Tom but Hermione, Hermione reached out to both of them equally, and so she could sit beside them at that table and realize that it was a conversation with four people and not two.

It was strangely liberating, she might not know the words or know his name but he could tell by the way they talked, the way she approached them that she knew there was more than one person behind Harry’s eyes at times. No one had ever known that and if they had guessed he imagined they would have stayed far away, because that was the attribute of a freak, but she had stepped closer instead.

So he had asked Hermione Granger and they had both been presented with rock cakes at Hagrid’s and small talked until they could get to the true focus of the conversation. What was the three headed dog guarding?

“How you kids liking school?” He asked beaming at the pair of them. Harry and Hermione looked at each other, perhaps wondering what to mention and what to leave out. Harry thought Hogwarts was wonderful, it was the first time he’d met people other than Tom who had seemed interested in him, but there were aspects of it he didn’t like. He knew that Hermione, until recently, hadn’t liked Hogwarts at all.

“It’s nice.” Hermione answered for them with a somewhat awkward expression as if she was really thinking of what to say, “I really enjoy magic.”

_Bring up the dog, now’s as good a time as ever, talk about how you enjoy exploring the castle or something._

Harry almost didn’t want to, he liked Hogwarts the way it was, with Ron and magic and classes and he knew that whatever Tom was looking for in that corridor would ruin whatever illusion Hogwarts held. He felt that if he didn’t look for anything, if he didn’t touch anything, than things could stay exactly as they were. He knew that it was most likely not true, that things were progressing outside of his control with or without his influence, but he felt it all the same.

There was Quirrel though, Snape, and even Dumbledore so Harry knew that even if he didn’t ask on Tom’s behalf something was going to happen. The dog in the corridor was just the start.

“I like to explore the castle, this one time I got lost though and ended up on the third floor in that corridor and I saw this three headed dog.”

“What were you doing up there with Fluffy?” Hagrid exclaimed nearly knocking over the cups of tea with his great flailing hands.

_Fluffy, of course he would name the Cerberus Fluffy._ Harry felt Tom sigh in his head, _Did you know Harry, that our dear friend Hagrid over here once thought it was a brilliant idea to raise a man eating spider inside the school during a slew of petrifications and a murder? Even after getting his wand snapped and living as a grounds keeper it appears he still hasn’t learned his lesson, Fluffy, honestly._

Harry didn’t think Fluffy was a great name either certainly not something he would have thought of naming the dog.

Tom had apparently been vague acquaintances with Hagrid when he was Tom Riddle and still human, he’d never go into explicit details, but every once in a while he’d let facts about various people Dumbledore, Hagrid, professor McGonagall and a few others Harry had never met slip in regular conversation. Hogwarts apparently brought up these old memories for him and every once in a while he’d say something about his time as Tom Riddle in Hogwarts. More often than not they weren’t kind observations and being about Tom Riddle rather than Tom Harry was never quite sure how to take them.

Dumbledore was perhaps the biggest example, Tom seemed almost irrational when it came to Dumbledore, and whenever they looked at him it was as if they were transported back fifty years and seeing a somber wizard with red hair instead of the old jovial man. There was this fire that burned in Harry’s head whenever he saw the man and with the force of Tom’s feeling Harry couldn’t help but feel he distrusted the old man as well. Things he learned along the way, the fact that Dumbledore held the key to the Potter vaults, that Dumbledore most likely placed him with the Dursleys and kept him there, didn’t help this trust but the moment was there from the first moment they spotted him. Dumbledore had always hated Tom Riddle, from the very first moment, and therefore he could not be trusted.

Something was hidden in that corridor they were both certain.

“Fluffy? Why is your dog in the castle, Hagrid?” Harry asked feeling as if they were both his words and Tom’s in the same instant. Hagrid seemed flustered at the pressing of the question and in the back of his head he could hear Tom wondering how it was that Hagrid was allowed to keep any sort of Dumbledore’s secrets if he spoke this easily, Hermione looking at Harry with questions in her eyes as well as a bit of wariness.

“That’s none of your business Harry that’s between Dumbledore and Flamel that is.”

It was like some sort of bell had been rung in his head and everything was still, all thoughts of further questions, suspicions, or anything else was gone and only clarity remained. In his head a single red stone seemed to glow in the dark, reaching out to them, as if there was nothing else in the world to search for.

_Ah, Flamel, I see._ Tom said almost distantly and finally after a pause, _We’ve learned all we needed to Harry, I don’t believe Hagrid has anything more useful to tell us at this time._

Hagrid for his own part looked rather alarmed, as if he realized he had just let something quite profound slip his lips, “I never said that, either of you, just forget about it. Not your business at any rate.”

And so Harry was allowed to hold up his hands in mock surrender, “Sorry, I just get curious sometimes, it’s not really important.”

And the conversation went on, even as Harry and further inside his head Tom, both thought on that word Flamel and all the implications that were brought with it.

* * *

“Severus, tell me, it’s been a few months now what have you managed to make of Harry’s cousin Mr. Evans?”

Meetings alone with Albus were far different from those he held with the staff, members of the Wizengamot, or most others. He tended to lose all desire for cryptic remarks and instead was quite jarring and went straight to the heart of the matter. Aside from his customary offering of a lemon drop, which no one appreciated, he rarely wasted time on idle chat or riddles.

Severus’ relationship with Hogwarts Headmaster was complicated to say the least, more so than his relationship with the dark lord had ever been. In truth, until the delivery of the prophecy he had only met the dark lord once or twice and rarely spoke with him. It was acknowledged that Severus was a talented potions brewer, and that with a few years spent earning his mastery he would be almost indispensable to the Death Eaters, but he lacked the pedigree and political influence to truly rise in the ranks. Before delivering the prophecy on hands and knees to the dark lord, unaware of the doom he was bringing down upon Lily Evans, he doubted the dark lord had even known his name.

With Albus it had always been more difficult to interpret just what sort of partnership they had managed to form over the years. There was trust there, certainly, Albus left him tasks that he would leave to no other but himself but it was the trust one would give a leashed dog. Severus had not sworn an oath to Dumbledore himself but rather to Harry Potter whose mother he had loved and whose father he had owed a life debt, in Dumbledore’s eyes that was much the same thing. Or at least, it should have been, had Harry Potter remained at the Dursleys and had he not disappeared and returned under the influence of an unknown man who seemed to be far too intelligent for his own good.

“The man is highly intelligent, as his transcripts and early admission into university would suggest.” Severus stated, “He has a moderate income, considering his student status, both from scholarships, various jobs, as well as what the government grants him for raising his cousin Harry. Most of his disposable income goes to the purchasing of books in a variety of different subjects, most muggle.”

“Most?” Dumbledore asked with raised eyebrows.

“Every once in a while magical books from Diagon Alley are delivered to him, most likely through Harry as an intermediary into the wizarding world. They range from beginning material to advanced, although I have not seen a purchase of a dark arts book, he reads them quite often.”

“And there has been no hint of magic used in the apartment?” Albus probed looking distant but thoughtful. He meant, of course, beyond the ministry wards put up around every muggle born’s house as tripping those would summon not only Albus but the ministry as well.

“No, if he is a wizard then he appears quite content to live as a muggle.” Severus concluded, he did not state that the man was or was not a wizard, because even after watching him go about his daily life and the sudden surge of inspiration he had gotten the month or so before he seemed to be neither muggle nor wizard. He seemed to belong to neither category, and sometimes just from that peculiar stillness he had, or the sharpness of his eyes Severus wondered if he was even really human.

“I doubt that it’s Tom, then, he would never be content to pretend to be a muggle under such scrutiny. He always despised muggles.” Albus said, speaking almost to himself rather than Severus.

“Quite, he’s known to be rather unsociable, spending time in coffee shops or at the university mostly doing his work. He has a few acquaintances but his strongest relationship seems to be with Potter, it seems that he is estranged with any of his remaining closer relatives, the ones who are alive at the very least. He has a few female admirers, students, coworkers, neighbors but he doesn’t seem to share their interest and has made no moves to even casually reciprocate their feelings. As far as it seems his main interests lie in Harry and knowledge, he seems very distant from the world he lives in, a born Ravenclaw if I ever saw one.”

The man always had that still intensity about him though, even when merely reading books, and it seemed as if those books just by being held in his hands became somehow more important than anything around him. It was a sort of charisma and confidence that both pushed and pulled on the people around him until it seemed as if he walked through ordinary places with a sort of mystical energy that surrounded him. Beautiful, intangible, and not human all in the same instant so that all people could do was look at him and stare. Sometimes, watching him and analyzing the records from magic, Severus couldn’t help but think the man would have made a rather dangerous wizard and that they were fortunate that he either was or chose to be a muggle.

Albus smiled at the Ravenclaw statement, perhaps both amused and relieved that Severus hadn’t stated Slytherin, “Do keep an eye on him and tell me if anything changes.”

Severus simply nodded knowing that even though it seemed as if his business here was finished there were still things to be discussed. They had yet to touch on the Potter brat himself and as he was coming to realize since Potter’s reappearance these meetings would always revolve around the boy.

“I’ve heard that Harry’s quite the trouble maker when it comes to Potions, how many detentions has it been now Severus, twenty in three months?”

“More, the brat doesn’t know when to shut his mouth.” Severus said knowing even as he said it that it wasn’t quite what he meant. The boy didn’t talk without thinking, rather he thought too much about what he said, he meant every word. If it had been unnerving in October he wasn’t even certain of the word for it now. He’d begun to foist off more detentions on other professors and Filch than was considered polite, but at this point he no longer cared, so long as he didn’t have to watch those green eyes stare at him over scrubbed cauldrons.

Albus chuckled perhaps picturing James Potter in Harry’s place, as if he was reassured that the brat was just a brat, and that just went to show the details Severus hadn’t disclosed. As much as it pained him to admit it, and it was in some ways painful, the brat was cleverer than the juvenile James Potter had ever been.

As far as intelligence was concerned the boy resembled Lily more but then it was strange how much Severus found himself thinking on that distant muggle cousin rather than the boy’s own mother.

“Very intelligent though, a natural when it comes to magic.” Albus said the smile fading somewhat from his face, “Of course, given the prophecy it was to be expected, still magically talented children… Well, you know the stories.”

Severus said nothing as he suspected Albus was thinking back on the dark lord’s youth, he had apparently been quite the little wizard when he was young, and Albus had always distrusted that amount of power in someone with so little supervision.

“He is adequate in potions, hardly gifted.” Severus cut in, “He may be the top of his class but he’d do well to remember that he’s only a child.”

Albus made some sound of agreement, clearly thinking about other things though, finally he said, “I wonder what it is Harry desires out of all this? He’s a very quiet boy, other than Ron Weasley and recently Hermione Granger he appears to have no real friends, the quiet children always seem to have the most interesting opinions.” 

Granger, now that was an interesting relationship if he ever saw one, but then he supposed saving one from death would cause the sudden growth of any friendship. What was truly odd about the whole thing was not the destruction of the bathroom, or the crying terrified girl, but the lack of troll and that controlled dangerous look that had been in Potter’s eyes when they found him. He had said, calmly, that the troll had lost interest in the bathroom after they had hid from his view and had wandered elsewhere and the girl had not said anything to contradict this. Since then, as far as Potions was concerned, he and the girl were inseparable and Weasley did not look pleased by the change in dynamics. Severus found the fact that he had to pay attention to the friendships of eleven year olds both exhausting and frustrating as he’d much rather pretend Potter junior had died with the rest of his family in the massacre that Halloween night.

Albus words alluded to scheming as they often had before, but Severus did not comment, other than keeping Harry Potter alive he had no obligations to the boy. It was easier, in some ways, to work for Albus Dumbledore rather than to work purely for the boy’s best interests. Still, looking at Potter laughing in the hallways with the youngest Weasley son he couldn’t help but feel that Albus was wrong, eleven year olds did not have interesting opinions.

“Quirrel seems a bit off since his trip to Romania.” Severus noted his eyes narrowing at Albus, he had no doubt Albus had noticed the changes the man had always been timid and non-confrontational but he had never stuttered, “I find him sneaking around the third corridor quite often.”

“Yes,” Albus said absently without clarifying, “It would be best to keep an eye on him as well, I fear he may have made some rather questionable decisions while on sabbatical, hopefully though I am wrong and that he will soon recover from the vampire attack.”

An eye on him, Severus had played the role of a pawn before and he knew what it tasted like, perhaps he was not so much a pawn now as a higher ranking bishop but he was a chess piece none the less. If he cared about children in the way Minerva cared about children he would perhaps comment that it was not the best of ideas to create elaborate traps around the philosopher’s stone as if it were a magical obstacle course, but the sad truth was that Severus didn’t care for children in general, and that it really wasn’t his business. He’d prevent the man from causing too much collateral damage but getting rid of him entirely didn’t seem to be on the agenda.

Severus got up to leave the office feeling that whatever needed to be said had already been spoken, before he could reach the door though Albus asked one final question, “Does he still remind you of his father more than his mother?”

He didn’t even bother to turn around, “Without question.”


	12. Chapter 12

It was a new place, pulled not quite from Tom’s memories, but from a place resembling them. It appeared to be a library, some cross between the university’s library and Hogwarts’, light filtering in through large windows, and thousands of books lining the walls. False faceless people occupied the fringes carrying on with inaudible nonsensical conversations with one another as if this was truly a world instead of facsimile and across from him the young Harry Potter looked at him with large blinking green eyes.

Perhaps he was thrown off by the surroundings as well; they had a certain realism that they rarely used with each other. Tom the notebook and Harry had always belonged to the world of the surreal and it was the concrete lucid reality that threw them off balance.

“So, what’s really going on at Hogwarts?” Harry spoke first, his voice quiet, almost lost in the innocuous clatter of the faceless students surrounding them, he looked directly in Tom’s eye though not in a manner that was accusing but with a blankness that reflected Tom as no other’s eyes ever had.

Harry, Tom often found himself thinking, though still a child had the capabilities of perceiving Tom with an accuracy that no other had managed. Not Tom Riddle who no longer existed split into pieces and separated from humanity as he was but the Tom that had become the notebook. His eyes were like a still pond, in which one could drop a stone, and watch the ripples of thought spreading outwards.

It had taken him a while to ask this question, he had hinted at it, but not truly asked. Tom suspected that Harry did not want to know, much like the young Tom Riddle he had built a palace of dreams in his head and called it Hogwarts, it was difficult to expel such illusions. Their talk with Hagrid though, the name that Tom had recognized instantaneously from his own search into the methods of immortality, had opened up the metaphorical floodgates.

“I’m beginning to think that place has turned into a political madhouse.” Tom said drily a half-smile appearing on his lips. In Tom Riddle’s age there had never been this sense of danger, no former terrorist professor nor hints of death should a student accidently wander down the wrong corridor. The human Tom Riddle’s tenure at Hogwarts seemed positively mundane even with the basilisk fiasco that had ended in Myrtle’s death.

Harry said nothing, face inexpressive, discarding the comment without a second thought. He supposed Harry wasn’t really in the mood for frivolous commentary, being trapped in a diary for fifty years though and Tom often found himself releasing his thoughts in the hopes that someone might catch them. Mostly to Harry, who appreciated them every once in a while as if they were curious butterflies floating by his hand, and sometimes now to Hermione Granger who took it as a sign that she must desperately try to keep pace with him.

No, this was not one of those lighter conversations, and it was strange how much Tom wished that it was. Three years with the boy, living in his thoughts and in his house, had softened him not to the point of weakness but certainly to the point of nostalgia.

His eyes met Harry’s over the table neither of them flinching from the other’s gaze, “Do you know who Flamel is? Or, rather, what the philosopher's stone is?”

Harry shook his head, “Only that there’s a stone and that it’s red and… and it’s important.”

Tom wondered for a moment if Harry had gotten that from his thoughts, it hadn’t been so noticeable in the notebook, but over the past years it became clear that in some ways they occupied the same conscious space. Tom would catch images, thoughts, and impressions from Harry and strangely enough sometimes Tom would feel Harry inside him picking out images here and there from Tom’s own mind. Their separation had made it more blatant as Hogwarts continually streamed through Tom’s consciousness, even when fully present in Thomas Evans he would occasionally find himself distracted by flashes of a stern and older Minerva McGonagall handing out various materials or the dark piercing glare of Severus Snape. Thomas Evans was gaining something of a reputation by the students who visited him during office hours as a space cadet, a brilliant man who was far better at physics and programming than they were capable of becoming, but prone to lapses in attention every once in a while for no explicable reason. Sometimes, even when in another country entirely, it seemed as if Harry’s eyes would stare through him until his thoughts were bare.

(It was becoming harder to tell where Harry Potter ended and Tom began.)

“True, that’s a good generalization I suppose, if you want to skip all the necessary details.” Tom mused his pale fingers tapping on the table in a constant rhythm, “The stone is Nicolas Flamel’s magnum opus, and perhaps the greatest alchemical if not magical invention, it does a variety of things but what it is most known for is the ability to grant eternal youth as well as an infinite supply of gold.”

Harry’s eyes at that seemed to focus, so he did understand, Tom would expect nothing less of him. Harry was very intelligent, he was not prone to research as Tom had been but he was more observant, and his intuition (at least as a child) was sharper than the eleven year old Tom Riddle’s had been. The eleven year old Harry Potter would never have told Albus Dumbledore that he spoke to snakes and liked to make them hurt, as it stood the eleven year old Harry had been very reluctant to tell Severus Snape that the Dursleys had even existed. Immortality was a dangerous word that buzzed in the walls of their joint dreams like the hum of hungry locusts; anarchy, destruction, and famine were inherent in that sound.

“Yes, as you can imagine it’s quite sought after by many interested parties.” Tom concurred with Harry’s silent thoughts before continuing, “Now, Flamel has kept the stone in his possession for nearly four centuries occasionally moving it here or there for protection, but when you keep something around that long eventually you’re going to run into the probability that the safeguards will fail, that’s simply the nature of probability after all. You remember Ron Weasley telling you about that Gringott’s break in during the fall, a feat reputed as being nearly impossible? It was reported that there was only one item in the vault and that earlier that very day the item had been withdrawn from the bank meaning the heist had failed. Putting two and two together someone’s after the stone, they probably tried Flamel’s wards first and failed, forcing him to temporarily place the stone in Gringotts where it could be collected by his old apprentice and now friend Albus Dumbledore.”

“You think the stone’s in the corridor? Underneath that trap door?” Harry asked, although it was less like a question and more like a statement, with that introduction it seemed clear what conclusions Tom had drawn from Hagrid’s slips of the tongue.

“Yes, I do believe the stone is here in Hogwarts. However, there’s something decidedly odd about this situation.”

Here Tom paused and looked at Harry, he had yet to tell Harry about Quirrel, about Voldemort, and about Tom Riddle’s ambitions when he had placed half of himself in a diary. He had been mulling of the topic for some time, it haunted the edges of his dreams where even Harry did not wander, and he stared at that malformed doppelganger and wondered how he could even look at it let alone explain it rationally. The hesitation wasn’t like him and it reflected in their surroundings, everything growing quiet, seeming to pause as if time itself had stalled.

“There are some things you should know.” Tom finally said looking away from Harry and instead at the walls where the glass of the windows had extended and turned into mirrors reflecting the dark haired Tom, in the form of the almost Tom Riddle that had existed very briefly at the Dudley’s hospital bedside, and Harry Potter.

“I told you that I was once a human called Tom Riddle and that I placed myself in a diary in the midst of World War II and the first wizarding war with the German dark lord Grindlewald.” In the mirror an image of Tom Riddle, in immaculate Slytherin’s robes with the prefect’s badge on his lapels, “This is not strictly true, it is a summarization, but it skips over the finer details. I am a derivative of him, a piece of his soul and memory; so that when I turn back and I see him I know that I do not quite match, he is a prototype of me. I am Tom but I am not Tom Riddle, not the one there at any rate, he no longer exists as such.”

Harry quietly added in, “I know that.”

Tom turned to him, seeing the flat expression in the boy’s eyes, and thought that if anyone could grasp the concept of Schrödinger’s cat, of being yet not being in the same moment then it would be Harry James Potter. There was some implication in that, some line stepped over that said Harry had wandered too far and too close to know that, but Tom ignored it as Tom Riddle disappeared in the glass.

“Yes, Tom Riddle had… ambitions. I neither condone nor condemn them, I do not envy them either they are no longer mine to cling to, but they existed all the same. He decided, before he even had the ideas to form such notions, that he would one day rule over his peers and transcend his pitiful existence. He recreated a name from his old one, scrambling the letters to form something new, and declared that he would become the dark lord Voldemort. I am Lord Voldemort, I am become Death Destroyer of Worlds, I am that I am, it was a crude and forced sort of elegance but there’s something divine in that use of ‘to be’ isn’t there? At any rate you might say that my… creation coincided with Lord Voldemort’s birth.” He paused for a moment the library stretched thin, whatever realism he had initially desired lost, and soon there were clocks dripping in the trees landing in puddles of seconds on the barren floor; the persistence of memory.

“Lord Voldemort and I kept company for a few years, I was convinced that despite my relocation and my new state that I too was Lord Voldemort, I had not quite realized that Tom Riddle was no longer my name. I do not believe I was meant to have sentience, I was supposed to be an idea, a static container of the soul; I was not expected to think. We drifted, he stopped writing, and the last I heard from him he was working as a clerk in Knockturn Alley dealing with dangerous and sometimes stolen goods. My next contact with the physical realm would not be until I met you.”

Harry stood quietly, the table and chairs having disappeared with the library, and stared off into the painted horizon. He had that look about him that he’d had after Dudley Dursley’s death, that quiet pale intensity, distant and shaken all in the same moment that seemed to remove him from his humanity as much as Tom was removed from his own. He’d been so quiet then, as Tom had attempted to adjust to the idea of being again, Harry had been so terribly quiet.

“I suspected that the nameless dark lord was Lord Voldemort as soon as I heard mention of him and the details I did hear only solidified what I’d been suspecting. However it wasn’t until you brought me to Quirrel that I saw just what had become of the other half of Tom Riddle.”

That grabbed Harry’s attention, his head snapping to Tom’s and his eyes focusing, “That thing in the back of Quirrel’s head…”

“Is Lord Voldemort, a derivative of Tom Riddle, my doppelganger and yet not quite… Yes, and I am more than certain that he has come as a parasite in Quirrel’s head solely for the stone that rests beneath the trap door. It is not a hiding place that Dumbledore has erected, it is an invitation.”

Clock gears appeared beneath their feet, the ground growing transparent so they could see them clicking away, turning away as if moving the levers of Harry’s rushing thoughts and conclusions. The boy’s eyes seemed dark then and so terribly flat, not as they had been with Tom leaving the hospital walking slowly away without looking back into the fluorescent lights, but with steel behind them. “He wants to be immortal.”

“It was the reason for my creation in the first place.” Tom consented, thinking back to that word horcruxes, what an elegant solution it had seemed at the time, “However he can also use the stone to recreate a body which he desperately wishes to obtain given his current state.”

“He can’t…” Harry didn’t say ‘do what you did to Dudley’ but it was heavily implied.

“He would have done that already if he could.” Tom said shortly, which was true, the Lord Voldemort hardly needed Quirrel if he could have used him to recreate himself.

Recreating a body had been almost instinctual, when Harry, and then even Dudley had picked him up it was as if the instructions had been hardwired into him. There was no thought of the details only the act in itself like light bursting everywhere, in transitioning from the notebook to a human body he had almost seemed enlightened. Just as the human mind knew how to make a heartbeat Tom had known how to create a body from the sacrifice of a soul.

Abruptly Harry was laughing, the kind of laughter one reached when crying seemed too absurd, a hysterical break of humor when the world seemed so crooked that it was almost funny. The world around them seemed in flux, elements constantly and appearing and disappearing in rhythm with Harry’s agitation. They were spinning on a slightly tilted axis until it seemed as if the merry go round they found themselves on had always been in play.

Tom walked over to him and pulled the boy to him, holding him until the shaking stopped, thinking only instead on things that he was and he wasn’t and a desire for clear cut lines of existence. Those were luxuries he hadn’t considered until he had split his soul in half.

“Do you know why he did it, why he killed them, killed everyone?” Harry asked that cracked smile still on his face. Beyond them the faces of Lily and James Potter flashed particularly brightly, burning out before they had even begun to shine. When Tom had first seen their faces and their ages he had thought how terribly young they were, barely out of Hogwarts, they had been noted as having so much potential but now they only ever would have potential.

“No,” Tom said his voice soft and his eyes narrowed as he thought about his own conclusions drawn from his research into the dark lord, “I’m afraid I don’t understand him at all.”

And he was afraid because that had once been him, might still be him from some perspectives, and he could not fathom its thoughts or motives. It seemed so senseless, those actions it had taken, without purpose or directions so that the dark lord Voldemort was only a thing of terror and destruction; a mad and rabid dog.

Harry seemed to reach some decision, his hands gripping the fabric of Tom’s dark clothing, and he looked up into Tom’s eyes, “He isn’t you.”

And just like that the spinning stopped and there was relief inside him, inescapable and yet unfathomable relief. The world seemed impossibly still, a fabrication, a simulation but even so it still glittered.

Absurdly Tom felt the need to thank Harry instead he simply said with his own broken smile, “It might be useful, a philosopher’s stone, certainly better in our hands than his or Dumbledore’s.”

And Harry nodded the dream world left in shards around them with the clock gears of thought and scheming still whirring away towards the infinite beneath their feet.

* * *

After their visit to Hagrid’s Harry had gotten very quiet, both of them, until she could barely tell which was which anymore. She hadn’t realized how much she had relied on dialogue to tell the difference. The one Harry had confident diction like an actor performing Shakespeare but the other Harry spoke more like he was his age, not always certain of his words and sometimes acting awkwardly. She had thought they were very different people, but lost in thought, staring out the windows of the library she wondered if they were that different after all.

Maybe she had been imagining that it was two different Harrys.

Whatever Harry had learned from Hagrid, from those brief few sentences, it was keeping him very occupied until it seemed like he was always lost in some thought or another. It made her feel a little lonely and more than a little left out, because for a moment it had been their adventure, but now it was only his.

She hadn’t really wanted to get involved, she didn’t really think it was any of their business or even that Harry was right about any of it, but even so she didn’t like being brought in only to be left out.

She didn’t know if he’d approve but she began researching Flamel anyway, because it had been that name, not Fluffy that had answered Harry’s unasked question. It was taking her longer than she thought. Wizarding libraries were organized by subject which was all well and good, except that she didn’t know many magical subjects certainly not enough to recognize a name well enough to know where to look. It’d been a big reminder that she was a muggleborn, and that in some ways she’d never really belong in this world, she always tried to shake off that thought when it came up.

As of yet she had not seen mentions in Transfiguration or Charms but Potions was next on her list and she was hoping that she might find some mention of Flamel in the more general books there.

There were other things to worry about too.

It was very close to Christmas, Hermione would be heading back to her parents soon and she had no idea what she’d tell them about the year, she had been writing of course but writing was different. It was different from being there and telling them everything, everything she tried to, and knowing that they’d never understand because they weren’t like her. It was kind of sad, coming to that realization.

They were in the library each of them with their pile of books, hers there for the search for Flamel and various other topics, and Harry’s on a myriad of different subjects seemingly chosen at random. She didn’t expect Ron to be coming by; Harry and Ron had had something of a falling out, ever since Harry had gotten quiet really. Harry’s withdrawal into himself, that distant pensive air he had about him, had thrown Ron off and when Hermione had refused to be deterred by it Ron had said that it was over and Harry could find himself some new friends.

“It’s like you’re not even trying mate.” He’d said in disgust walking off towards Seamus and Dean shaking his head and throwing his hands in the air.

Harry hadn’t gone chasing after him yet, he had looked distantly sorrowful, but also resigned as if he had secretly expected it all along. It was the saddest thing she had ever seen.

“Harry,” She said, interrupting his reading, his eyes flicked up to hers and once again she didn’t know which one she was talking to. “Are you going home for Christmas?”

He nodded slowly, “Yeah, I’d like to see my uncle… He’s been working on some projects and well I also miss him.” He smiled a bit at the end, but it was more than nostalgic it was also sad, as if there was quite a bit left unsaid there beyond just missing him.

So it was the normal Harry then, the softer one, who didn’t use his words like knives and burned a little less brightly than his counterpart but this was the Harry who understood things like Ron and parents so it was all well and good, “I don’t know what I’m going to tell my parents, about Hogwarts, there’s just so much…”

So much she couldn’t describe, too many words, how would she fit them into a month?

“Yeah… My uncle and I are really close though, so I haven’t really thought about how to tell him anything, he’ll understand.” He said and then his eyes flicked to her, just staring for a few moments, before saying hesitantly, “You should come visit, we live in London, and I think you’d really get along. He also likes books.”

She’d heard odds and ends about Harry’s uncle, a cousin really, and she wasn’t sure what she thought of him. Mostly what it boiled down to was that he was very intelligent but also driven and that Harry respected him immensely. It was more than respect though, it was also devotion. Hermione loved her parents and they loved her but she had never looked at them the way that Harry looked when he even thought about his uncle.

She suspected she’d wanted to meet him ever since she first heard him mentioned on the train to Hogwarts.

“I’d love to. Thank you, Harry.” She said clasping his hand across the table, too far away to hug him, and trying not to look like she was about to burst into grateful tears.

No one had ever been as nice to her as Harry was, before Harry no one had even looked at her, she had been so casually dismissed as the book worm and then at Hogwarts as the muggle born but she was neither to Harry and it felt wonderful. She hoped he knew that.

He looked a bit awkward after a bit his cheeks flushing slightly and looking away from their joined hands, it was strangely adorable in a way that the other Harry never could manage, “It’s really no problem, I mean we are friends so it’ll be good to see you over break.”

“Still, I don’t think I ever said thank you… Not just for the troll but for everything else too.”

“Yeah…” He said trailing off and withdrawing his hand from hers reaching instead for the discarded book and hiding his face behind it.

She watched as he settled back into reading his eyes quickly darting from word to word, taking each in with a speed that was almost uncanny, and finally she decided she might as well simply ask, “Harry, who is Flamel?”

The book was lowered slowly onto the table set aside this time and when he regarded her it was with a carefulness that didn’t seem to belong to an eleven year old. “Are you sure you want to know?”

She blinked at that almost affronted, “What do you mean?”

He didn’t seem phased but continued to look at her with eyes that seemed to pierce through her, “Once you know you can’t unknow, it won’t be like a mystery novel, it’ll be real and Hogwarts won’t be Hogwarts anymore. It’s also dangerous.”

He had mentioned suspicions, not definite suspicions, but suspicions on the way to Hagrid’s that whatever was hidden was dangerous but he seemed so certain now as if that one name had confirmed everything.

“I don’t care if it’s not like a mystery novel, I know Harry… Believe me I know that life isn’t like books, that’s probably why I read so much, because the books were always so much better… It doesn’t matter though because we went to Hagrid’s together!”

That seemed to reach him, he looked at her mildly surprised, and then he nodded, “Nicolas Flamel is a very famous alchemist, probably the most famous, he invented the philosopher’s stone. It’s this stone that…”

“Turns lead into gold and gives eternal youth.” She finished for him filling in the blanks from her own muggle reading of the alchemists who had tried it before alchemy had transformed into modern chemistry.

Harry nodded with a smile, “Of course you know already, it’s only me who… Well anyway, if anything was going to be hidden here, with Dumbledore guarding it as well as Hogwarts’ wards it’d be that.”

“…And if they’re guarding it here then someone’s after it.” Hermione concluded the pieces coming together in her head to which Harry nodded again.

The idea that something that powerful, that mystical, was in the castle was more than a little alarming and for a moment Harry’s sober attitude extended to her as well before she shook it off.

“I’m sure the professors are being very careful about it though, and Headmaster Dumbledore is protecting it too, he’s the greatest wizard of our time so I doubt anyone could sneak past him and steal it. I’m sure it’s just fine where it is.” She felt like she was convincing herself more than convincing him, his face didn’t reveal anything, but he didn’t look relieved and that unnerved her.

“Yeah, you’re right, we shouldn’t worry about it.” He smiled then, but it seemed stretched, as if he was just putting it on to make her feel better, “I didn’t want to tell you in case it got you worried, you’re always so worried about class that I didn’t want to add an extra thing onto your plate.”

It’d be sweet if he wasn’t lying, or almost lying, there was some truth in there but it was mostly false. As it was there was a pang of betrayal in her chest, but she kept her mouth shut, she knew that pressing now would get her nowhere and that she'd have to wait and see what Harry was up to later. Everyone lied a little bit, she told herself, even someone like Harry.

As it was she did have to focus on her studies, she was still miles behind Harry in everything but theory, and even then it was only because Harry seemed to have his own theories and didn’t quite believe the ones they were given in the text books. She didn’t know if she had to be first but she knew she had to get closer, and it was strangely fun, competing with Harry and even though she didn’t win she got a little better each time so that professors didn’t always praise him but also praised her.

One day, she said to herself, she was going to beat him in at least one subject and she would never let him forget it.

There were other things to think about, like Christmas, her parents, her studies and she didn’t have time for three headed dogs and philosopher’s stones. That’s what she told herself at any rate.

* * *

Harry was determined to say goodbye to Ron before he left, even if Ron didn’t want to, and maybe Harry was being selfish for doing it but he didn’t care. Harry had never had real friends, he had only ever had Tom, and Tom was more than friend somehow. If there was such a thing as family, as kinship, then that’s what Tom was.

Harry had always wanted a friend, a human friend, someone he could just have fun with who didn’t need to understand but who instead would see what Harry wanted him to. Harry had wanted to play pretend and Ron had seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Ron saw the boy who lived every time he looked at Harry, Harry knew that, but even so he didn’t see what Harry really was either. To him Harry was just another bloke, one of the gang, a friend and Harry had wanted that more than anything.

And it was true that Ron was not Tom, would never be Tom, even after everything Tom was and had done but even so Harry had thought there was something. He had thought it was real though, until the troll and Hermione Granger.

She had held his hand in the library, looking truly grateful, and said thank you to him even though she knew that Harry wasn’t just Harry but also in some ways Tom. She didn’t flinch away from that, didn’t seem to care at all, and Harry had known that Ron would have been horrified at the prospect of Harry’s shared connection with Tom.

Looking at Hermione, telling her to come to their apartment, the illusion had cracked. All the illusions were cracking.

He was still reeling at Tom Riddle, at Quirrel, at what happened to Tom Riddle, and at Tom as well. He had awoken from that dream physically ill, all of them a jumble in his head until he could barely tell which was which, and he felt Tom standing in the back of his mind almost out of sight but worried all the same. Tom was not Quirrel though, he wasn’t even Tom Riddle, Harry had decided that even before Tom had told him.

Quirrel was no longer an abstract horror though, no longer this nameless abomination in a classroom, and every time Harry looked at him he couldn’t help but think that name; Voldemort. It didn’t deserve a name, it had no face, how could it possibly have a name?

With Christmas approaching and leaving Hogwarts for some time he decided not to think about it, to shove it out of his head as he had Dudley’s glazed eyes so long ago, it was easier that way.

Now there was only Ron and a few loose ends to tie up, he found Ron in the common room playing chess with Dean. Ron was good at chess, not as good as Tom who sometimes demanded to play in Harry’s place when Ron’s winning streak got too large, but he certainly was trumping Dean. Harry stood awkwardly beside the board, watching the figures move, and tried to find the right words.

“Hi Ron… Dean.” He said, the pair looked up at him Ron vaguely irritated and Dean somewhat surprised. Harry kept mostly to himself, even in their dorm room, he was known for being pretty quiet.

“Potter.” Ron said, and Harry flinched at having been reduced to Potter as if they were only vague acquaintances, “We’re a bit busy if you don’t mind.”

“I’m heading back to London today and I just wanted… I wanted to let you know that I’m sorry for, well for everything, and I know I haven’t been the greatest of friends but… I’m glad we were friends, you know?”

Ron didn’t look up from the pieces while Dean looked surprisingly more awkward. Glancing at Ron Dean held up his hands in surrender and made to leave, “Look maybe I should…”

“It’s your turn Dean.” Ron interrupted causing Dean to relax into his seat once more and take a look at the board. There seemed to be nothing left for any of them to say, and for a moment Harry just wished he could keep on pretending, but Tom was right those types of charades were pointless.

“Well, anyway, that was it. So, goodbye I guess.” Harry said, something lodging in his throat, and he turned from the pair of them and tried to convince himself that this was not worth tears. He had not really lost anything because he had never had it to begin with.

In his mind he saw Thomas Evans, Tom, reaching out to him in London. It would be good to go home again, he couldn’t help but think.


	13. Chapter 13

Harry had never liked Christmas. In the beginning, before he met Tom, it had represented everything he didn’t have. Family, love, that special warm glow that lit up picture books and storefronts where everything seemed to be made of starlight; it had seemed so close then, whatever love was, trapped in those multicolored strings of light but even then it had seemed so terribly far. Towards the end he had come to realize, as much as any eight year old could, that these were things that weren’t meant for him. Christmas was a thing for people who didn’t live in cupboards.

He had only been happy for one Christmas, that last Christmas with the Dursleys, where he had made his own lights in the cupboard and thought that maybe magic and a friend were worth more than a tree and smiling family. For a moment there, his cupboard transformed with light, he had felt that special Christmas glow, that warmth.

After Dudley died and he was spirited away by Tom in the guise of Thomas Evans he’d come close but Dudley’s shade always seemed to appear unannounced and unacknowledged in their midst. It was easier to move on, to shove Dudley down into a box in his head, when it wasn’t the holidays. He was too easily reminded by things he didn’t want to think about when holiday jingles were in the air.

Tom seemed to realize that even if Harry had never said anything about it.

Thomas Evans greeted him between platforms nine and ten, on the muggle side of the barrier, with a softer smile than he usually wore and wrinkled clothing that was perhaps a bit more formal than it needed to be. Amidst the red and green ribbons and the wreathes hanging in the station he looked out of place perhaps even more than he usually did with his pale sculpted features and his clear eyes.

“Hello Harry, I trust school has been vaguely educational.” Almost without realizing it Harry rushed towards him and hugged him. The man stiffened slightly at the contact, even when in the diary Tom had never been a person to touch, but he relaxed and hesitantly put a hand on Harry’s back holding him there.

“I missed you.” Harry said, because he did, even though Tom wasn’t in his head he had grown used to the presence of Thomas Evans, of Tom with a body and ideas and actions of his own. Harry hadn’t realized how much he would miss having someone else there, someone to talk to right in front of them, and knowing that they understood him better than anything else.

“Yes,” Tom said distantly, “I did too.”

Harry had left his trunk at school, it wasn’t as if he’d need it at home, so they’d decided to take the tube back to the apartment rather than a cab. It was as they were waiting for the silver train, Tom’s hand in his, that Tom decided to start talking. The loud crowded station suddenly seemed dimmer, more distant, as if Harry and Tom existed in a bubble that was a world away from the dirt stained walls and the distant rattling of the train, “I thought it best to warn you now that our house has been bugged.”

Harry’s eyes swiveled away from the platform to Tom whose face held that grim determined expression he only wore when something required more than the usual amount of thought from him, “Bugged?”

“The ministry sets up detection in muggle homes for underage magic, as Thomas Evans is a muggle this was automatically set up. I expected that, however there’s slightly more. It’s subtle, too subtle to be done by a bureaucrat, they’re spells that begin to record at any sign of magic. Books, conversation, anything can trigger it. I’d be very impressed if it wasn’t so damned obnoxious.” He frowned slightly pausing as if to contemplate the minor annoyance this had made, “However it is very limited, the loop holes abound when one looks for them. It does not appear to track conversations on physics and magic as a concept of science rather than wizardry so your conversations and mine would most likely be left unrecorded even had we not known of this thing’s existence.”

“So what should we do about it?” Harry asked looking at Tom.

“For the moment, nothing, leave it as it is. With all these eyes on Harry Potter I’m not entirely comfortable getting rid of the thing entirely. Just watch what you say and if you want to talk about anything really interesting we go outside to do it.” Tom smiled then, a tight lipped thing that seemed to force the issue away and the bubble around them disappeared as they stepped onto the train.

Harry did notice the wards as soon as they stepped near the place, the apartment appeared almost smothered, as if blankets had been thrown over it until it was almost stifling. Tom didn’t appear to notice but then he had probably also grown used to the feel of it over the months to Harry it was all new. The apartment itself was much the same, books everywhere, but most of the magic books they had purchased were hidden away so that only those that Thomas Evans could conceivably buy were in plain view.

The place lacked any Christmas decoration whatsoever; looking just like it always did at any other time of the year, and Harry couldn’t help but smile appreciatively at Tom for the gesture. In his body Tom didn’t react but in his mind he felt Tom shift in acknowledgement.

It wasn’t normal, not like the Dursleys had always tried to be, but it was better than that and he had forgotten how wonderful that was. Hogwarts would always be Hogwarts, a place of glittering promises true or not, but home was with Tom.

They spent a surprising amount of time out of the apartment that Christmas, Tom taking Harry to various sites, some they had visited before but others they hadn’t. It seemed like most days had them walking at a brisk pace around the city, here, there and everywhere in between. And it was out of the house, like Tom had said, that they talked about important things.

Harry had expected Tom to bring up Quirrel and the philosopher’s stone waiting in Hogwart’s forbidden corridor, he just wished that he would have waited a little longer.

They were in the park they used to visit during the years, where they practiced magic and discussed philosophy, it looked different in winter. Without color, the snow and ice obscuring the green and blue, it seemed like a world dreamed up between him and Tom in their nightly wanders throughout their dual consciousness.

“Quirrel will make a move on the stone given the soonest opportunity, whether he is prepared to breach Dumbledore’s defenses or not.”

They sat on a park bench staring out at the frozen water where in the Spring the ducks would swim. Instead they saw the mist their breath formed, as if they were dragons with smoke rising before them.

“We’re working on a very limited time span, possession, the style Voldemort is forced to at any rate is a very messy business. Think of Quirrel as a battery that’s on its last dredges of power, you heard Hagrid discussing the murdered unicorns in the woods, I have no doubt that’s his work and if he’s resorting to unicorn blood then he’s already more than halfway gone. It will be this year, before Dumbledore moves it, before Quirrel dies, by the end of Spring certainly.”

He looked very serious as he said this, staring ahead into the horizon as if seeing all these players before him, like it was chess and they were all simply pieces. Ron had never looked like that when playing chess but then Ron had never managed to beat Tom.

Harry didn’t comment on Voldemort or Quirrel, he still didn’t like the idea, didn’t like this hierarchy of Tom Riddles that existed. Related to each other but only not quite in a way that was too confusing and painful to follow. Possession was another idea that he didn’t like, thinking not only on himself as the willing host of Tom, but also on other darker things that he had long ago shoved into a box of things he would never think about. It all seemed to be coming back though and Harry had no choice but to look them in the face.

“Do we know what Dumbledore’s defenses are?” Harry asked instead.

“Well the three headed dog is obvious at this point, I don’t know much about magical creatures as a whole but from the books I’ve looked up music seems to be the key.” It was left unsaid that if music didn’t work they could always kill the dog but the idea hung in the air regardless, “Beyond that, I’m not sure, Hagrid appears to be the only one dumb enough to blather details… It will be tricky to learn the finer details of what’s involved. This whole situation has struck me as odd, with his introduction to the place it’s as if he’s placed a neon sign above the corridor inviting anyone in. Also there was the door, it was only a mild locking charm, one we bypassed without any real thought… It’s an invitation, the stone won’t be extremely accessible, but at the same time Dumbledore will need to draw someone in far enough to trap them.”

Tom sighed abruptly folding in on himself as if expelling the thoughts into the air surrounding them, “This is going to be difficult, we may have to rely on our combined expertise and hope that we get lucky.”

If Tom thought it was going to be difficult then Harry couldn’t imagine how hard it would really be. He wondered if it was worth it, getting this stone, it seemed to echo in Tom’s mind a red shining thing that he had to possess. It wasn’t even the immortality or the money it was something else, something within that rock that called to him, until it seemed that the only option left was to have it. Harry did agree with Tom though, he didn’t want the stone in Quirrel, Voldemort, his parent’s murder’s or in Dumbledore’s hands for that matter. He didn’t know what they would do with it, lock it away, destroy it, but better in his and Tom’s hands than in theirs.

Such things, he couldn’t help but think, had no right to exist.

“We’ll do it.” Harry said with more confidence than he felt causing Tom to look over at him with raised eyebrows, “We always do, I know we can do it.”

In his head he felt Tom’s gratitude, a soft small thing, and for a moment they were more than just Tom and Harry in a park but were the merged consciousness they shared in dreams a place that held no room for doubt.

“Of course.” Tom said a small smile growing on his face, “What are the Quirrels, Snapes, and dark lords of the world in comparison to a boy and his notebook?”

* * *

It had been decided before they had left for break that Hermione would visit Harry’s apartment where he lived with his uncle rather than him finding his way to the suburbs. Living in the city they didn’t own a car and used the tube instead to get around so getting to the suburbs wasn’t easy for them so it had made sense. There was also something about the suburbs though, when Hermione had described her house, that Harry didn’t like. The idea of white picket fences and freshly cut grass had made his face a bit sharper than it usually was as if he was on edge and Hermione didn’t know what that edge was. It seemed easier, for the time being, to let Harry have his secrets and visit his apartment instead.

Besides, she really did want to meet his uncle.

A few days before Christmas, her best normal clothing on and a few books on magic as well as other things clutched in her hands like a talisman, she and her parents made their way to the city to the front of Thomas Evans’ door.

It was a clean apartment complex, small but comfortable, and the door did not seem intimidating even with a few gold numbers inscribed on the front. Her parents had been thrilled to take her, she had never had many friends, and all the friends she had in school before Hogwarts had lost interest in her and her books. When she had written about Harry in November, minus the troll incident and the fact that there may or may not be two Harrys, they had seemed so happy.

After a light knock on the door, her mother smiling down at her, the door opened to reveal the most beautiful person Hermione had ever seen.

Hermione had never been into pop-stars or movie stars, her heroes had always been the knights and sometimes even the princes if they were heroic and wise enough. None of the ones in her head, even those with golden curls and blue eyes like jewels, resembled Thomas Evans. There was a sharpness to his features, the way they were so perfectly chiseled as if out of marble, and the pale blue of his eyes that seemed to burn that made him seem different from those golden princes in her story books. He was lean where they were muscular, giving him a more feminine cast than them, and something in his expression seemed altogether too clever for a prince to possess. Princes didn’t look at you like that, didn’t look through you as if you were written, that kind of expression was reserved for the dragon.

“Mr. and Mrs. Granger, I presume.” He said, reaching out a pale delicate looking hand to each of her parents. They seemed stunned by his appearance, perhaps thinking the same thing as her, but they shook his hand vigorously none the less.

“And you must be Hermione, Harry’s told me about you.” He smiled cheerfully down at her, an expression that wasn’t quite alien to his features but again a smile that didn’t belong to a prince either, it was a shallow expression worn out of politeness. She’d seen it before, Harry would wear it in Potions whenever Snape walked by.

“Hi, Mr. Evans.” She said shaking his cool hand feeling her face blush with the contact. His hands were very soft; she couldn’t feel a single callous.

“Please, Hermione, Mr. Evans is my… Well not my father per se but it makes me feel terribly old when you call me that. Tom is fine.”

He ushered them all inside closing the door softly behind them, “Mind the books, they’re sort of… Well they’ll find their way to the shelves eventually.”

As soon as they entered the apartment they saw what he meant, it wasn’t like living in a library, libraries were orderly places but instead it was like living in a forest of books where the literature just grew from the ground up. Stacks of books were everywhere, looking at titles and subjects most were things Hermione had never heard of, some were novels many were text books and some were books on magic.

He safely led them over to the kitchen table where he quickly began to clear the space of even more books as well as a few notebooks that had been scribbled in off the space. “I’ve got a kettle on the stove already so I suppose we can all have tea in a little bit.”

Harry then could be seen wandering in from the bedroom, staring at them all for a moment before smiling over at Hermione and making his own way to the table. She couldn’t help but notice that he was much better at navigating his way through the apartment than she or her parents had been, then again she guessed this was a regular occurrence for him.

“Hi Hermione… Mr. and Mrs. Granger.” He said reaching out a hand to shake theirs with a little less confidence than his uncle had shown.

“Oh, hello Harry.” Her mum said looking at Harry with a smile, “You’re just as adorable as I imagined.”

Harry flushed slightly, taken aback by the comment, his eyes flicked to his uncle who just shrugged slightly with a smile as if it was one of those things you simply had to roll with.

“Now, Tom, when Hermione said you were Harry’s uncle I didn’t think you’d be so young.” Her dad said. Now that she thought about it, looking at him, he was awfully young. Older than her and Harry, certainly, but she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him in Hogwarts.

Well, she would have, but that was only because he wouldn’t fit. Watching him at the table she noticed he didn’t fidget, not like Harry did, he sat perfectly still and just watched everything with a single expression on his face. He was still in a way that even professor Snape, whose steps were always so measured, wasn’t. She supposed she had been distracted by the way he had walked and looked at them but maybe if he’d been wearing a different expression…

“Well, I suppose one explanation is that I’m not Harry’s uncle, I’m his distant cousin.” He said thoughtfully, “It’s just sometimes easier to call me an uncle rather than go through the mess that’s the family tree.”

Hermione’s dad nodded, “I heard you were a graduate school student already, in engineering.”

“Yes, that’s correct, I’ll be finished soon though and then I suppose I’ll simply be an engineer.” Tom finished with a small smile.

Hermione felt something in her mind click at the sight of it, the start of a thought, and for a moment she just stared at his lips at the slight half twist that spoke of wryness and bitter edged humor. She’d seen that expression many times in the past few months, she’d learned to recognize it, because a torrent of cutting wit usually followed and detention from professor Snape usually followed that.

Her eyes flicked up and Thomas Evans was staring at her with that dragon’s stare, the kind that cut through you and knew your every thought, and she found herself feeling more than a little cold.

She guessed he and Harry were related after all.

“But you look so young, you can’t be older than twenty surely, and to be raising Harry all by yourself too.” Her mum added.

“Alas, I am twenty one and extremely baby-faced.” He said with a mock expression of woe that caused her parents to chuckle. He then looked at Harry with a fond expression on his face, a softness that he hadn’t had when looking at the rest of them, “As for raising Harry he practically raises himself, he’s a wonderful kind and I wish I had met him sooner.”

Harry smiled back, his expression also soft, but there was something lurking at the edges that same tightness that had appeared when Hermione talked about her wonderful house in the suburbs.

The tea kettle went off abruptly, Tom made his way to the stove to turn it off and begin pouring it into various mugs. Again she was caught by how efficiently he seemed to move, as if no movement was wasted, like a dancer she thought.

When he returned her dad started on the next question, one she’d had a feeling they would ask before they had even arrived, “So, Tom, you’re a… Oh what do they call us, muggles, Hermione?”

She nodded to show that it was the right word and her dad continued, “Right, a muggle, what do you think of all this magic business?”

She hadn’t wanted them to ask about it, she’d known they would, she’d seen the way their eyes had lit up when they realized that her friend Harry was also raised by muggles, or a muggle, that Thomas Evans would understand in a way that no one else seemed to. They didn’t talk about it much with her, she left most of the technical details about magic out of her letters home, but all the same there was a tension with the word. They had expected her to go to university, to do her best in school and maybe even carry on the family legacy and become a dentist, and then a letter had arrived and suddenly she wasn’t going to do that anymore. She knew they still sometimes thought about it, about universities she wouldn’t attend, futures in their world that she wouldn’t have.  It wasn’t like she’d died but more that she’d changed and it seemed like they were all lost in the same house not sure what to do with each other. Hermione had retreated to her books, to thoughts on Harry, and she didn’t know what they had retreated to.

Thomas Evans looked at them for a few moments with those strange sharp eyes of his, the way that Harry sometimes had looked at her as if taking in every particle of light that made up her image, and then calmly he said, “Magic is entirely the wrong word, and that is the crux of the matter.”

He smiled, that polite smile at their confused expressions, and continued, “Magic implies ineffability, non-understanding, a limit to what is known and can be done. Magic is miracles, not quite divine, but certainly beyond human comprehension. Magic is not magic, it is a part of the universe, therefore it is a part of physics just as everything else is. We, muggles as they call us, simply haven’t found it yet.”

Maybe they hadn’t thought his uncle would be that smart because her dad started laughing and her mum looked a bit stunned, “Certainly looked like hocus pocus to me, her professor, the deputy headmistress McGonagall came in and turned into a cat.”

That quirk of the lips again, a dry joke only half understood by the audience, “My introduction into the wizarding world was much less dramatic; professor Snape made a feather float.”

She looked at Harry, she hadn’t realized that it was professor Snape who had come to his house, she hadn’t thought anyone would have to explain things to Harry Potter. She wondered why professor McGonagall hadn’t gone instead and she wondered if it was something that happened during that visit that made professor Snape so mean to Harry.

Harry gave her a grim sort of smile, as if the meeting itself had not been pleasant, and she found her attention once again on Thomas Evans.

“I think they like to believe that such things are beyond us, that there is an us and a them, but I highly doubt that is the case. Perhaps that’s simply the engineer in me speaking, all those physics grade sets do give one a certain outlook on life.”

Things seemed easier after that, as if he had passed some invisible test in spite of his age, and soon enough once the tea was gone her parents left to do some last minute shopping for a few hours so that she could play with Harry.

As soon as they were out of the door she turned to Harry with a grin, “I brought a few books from home, I don’t know if you have them or not but I thought you might be interested.”

“Oh… Thanks Hermione.” He said as she placed them on the table, examining the covers, across the table Thomas Evans looked at the books too swiftly reading through the titles.

“So, Mr. Evans…” She started before he interrupted with what seemed like exasperation. It was the same sort of exasperation that occurred whenever she brought up Ron Weasley, fond but tried, but more importantly it was familiar as if he knew her.

“Hermione, it’s Tom please, I am only twenty one that hardly makes me a mister.”

She paused for a few moments, the way he said it, not really his voice but the way he spoke cool, clear, and crisp was so much like Harry that it was hard to believe they were only distant cousins rather than brothers. “Oh, um, Tom then, I hear you read books on magic too.”

A half-smile, an unintended joke on her part, “Well, you can’t fault me for being interested, it isn’t every day that you discover a secret society with advanced technology.”

“So you really think that magic isn’t magic, that it’s…” She trailed off, not sure what to call magic if it wasn’t really magic, she couldn’t think of a word.

“I believe it’s more accessible than they believe it is, yes.” He said, “I suppose your basic example would be electricity. Without explanation on the mechanics and only a light bulb and a battery, that bright white light, would appear to an ignorant audience to be mystical, magical, perhaps even divine. Physics is not limited to what is known, far from it, there have been many revolutions of thought with the idea of how the universe works. Classic Newtonian physics was replaced with Relativistic physics and so on, theories are constantly in change as we better understand the nature of the universe, and to say that magic is not physics simply because we’ve never heard of it and do not yet have an explanation is simply wrong. Science is the art of understanding the universe and it is not divorced from the universe itself.” He paused and looked at her books, the ones on magic with that wry smile that seemed to appear quite often on his face, “From what I’ve read from the wizards they fail to understand that concept.”

It was so weird, she thought, but it was almost like sitting in the library with Harry because she felt like she had heard that or something similar to it before. It went beyond resemblance, resemblance even when uncanny was still only similarity.

“Hermione, I got you something for Christmas.” Harry said, a wrapped gift on the table, he must have put it there without her noticing.

She took it with eager hands, she had gotten Harry a gift too, she hadn’t been sure what to give him for a while it was the first time getting a gift for a friend who really meant something and it had all been very distressing. She had thought a book, maybe, but then she wondered if it was only because she liked books so much that she wanted to get him one. There also was the problem that he seemed to read as much, if not more, than her so he already had read most of the books she would want to give him. In the end she had decided to get him a Gryffindor themed scarf, one that would be nice to have in winter, because while Harry had decent clothes she noticed that they weren’t always as nice as the ones she had.

“Oh Harry, here’s mine.” She said taking out his own present and handing it to him before unwrapping hers.

Despite the plain wrapping, white paper and scotch tape, it was quite extraordinary. It was a necklace, a simple silver locket, but it seemed to glow as if it was filled with light. She could tell right away that it was magic, it had that cool, clear, ethereal edge that nothing electric or neon could make and it sparkled like a diamond.

“Oh, Harry, it’s beautiful.” She said immediately working to clasp it around her neck pulling her hair out of the way, “I hope it wasn’t too expensive, you really shouldn’t have Harry.”

He shrugged sheepishly, “Well, I didn’t really buy it, I bought the necklace but I made… Well, and money’s not that much of a problem anyway since my vault at Gringotts is pretty full because of… It’s not really a problem.”

She looked down at it again, “You made this?”

“With his own two hands.” Came Thomas Evans dry remark from across the table, his own hands held in front of her as if to represent Harry’s.

He must have done it at school, she had known he was better at her in magic, but she hadn’t thought how much. She couldn’t create something like this, she didn’t even know where to start, it wasn’t a spell like lumos but more along the lines of enchantment which involved arithmancy and runes. Hermione wondered how long it would take her to catch up to him when he made everything seem so terribly easy.

“I can teach you how to make one, it’s not very hard.” He said, she looked up to see his anxious expression, he looked so worried staring at her as if she might leave at any moment. It struck her then that without Ron she was his only friend and even then she was his only real friend. All they had was each other.

“Oh, no, Harry…” She trailed off because she would like to make one and she wouldn’t leave him because she couldn’t, “I think I’d like that a lot, back at school I mean.”

He smiled, relief clear on his face, and leaned back in his chair.

“Now that that’s all settled,” Thomas Evans said, “It’s the holidays time and I suppose that means we have to watch some holiday themed film. Unfortunately Die Hard has far too many dead people and foul language for children but I suppose Home Alone is as good a substitute as any.”

(At the end of the movie Hermione learned that children could be very violent, she also thought Harry was a bit too inspired by the film and that she might want to warn professor Snape.)

* * *

In a darkened room near a fire place Severus Snape spent the holidays he didn’t celebrate thinking of Lily Evans and a promise he had left unfulfilled.


	14. Chapter 14

Hermione didn’t see Harry until they went back at school together, the holidays while seeming long were actually much shorter than she thought. There were relatives to visit and holidays to celebrate as well as reading to catch up on so it wasn’t until boarding the train to Hogsmede that she got to meet up with him.

She wanted to say that Harry changed over Christmas, certainly he seemed a bit more determined, but she thought that it could have happened before Christmas too after visiting Hagrid.

He looked tired, dark bags were under his eyes, and there were nights when she never saw him go up to the boy’s dormitory. He looked like he was always thinking about something, in class, in the library, even just walking along the hallways like his mind was always somewhere else entirely.

They still spent time together, he didn’t seem to spend any time with Ron anymore though, and she had thought that Ron’s absence would bother him but strangely enough it didn’t seem to. Sometimes he’d look at Ron, Ron walking with Dean and Seamus, but he wouldn’t say anything but instead would continue to do whatever he was doing. It was like what he’d told her before, Ron didn’t really matter to him, he was like a placeholder labeled ‘friend’ and seeing that; the lack of devastation in Harry, was rather painful to watch.

It made it all too clear that there could be some label on her stating ‘friend’ as well.

He wore her scarf though, even in classes, even in potions when it got in the way of things. And he kept his promise to try to teach her how to enchant objects.

He’d taken her to an odd room she’d never heard of, one called the Room of Requirement, located on the seventh floor of the school.  

“It’s whatever you require it to be, within reason of course, it will fail against certain magical laws like Gamp’s Law but for the most part it is more than sufficient.” Harry had said as they’d entered what seemed like a normal classroom but for the array of odd materials put neatly away into bins at the edge of the classroom.

As it turned out, not that hard for Harry, was very difficult for her. She’d noted that he seemed to be less concerned with the exact wand movements and language than she was; sitting next to him in class she’d often hear him pronounce spells wrong and yet they still worked. This had always frustrated her as well as confused her as when she tried with the incorrect pronunciation and movement there were no results.

It wasn’t until these tutoring sessions that she gained a clear understanding of why these things never seemed to matter to him, “You heard my uncle, right, about magic? How it’s not really magic but just different forces in the universe that can be manipulated.”

She’d nodded, she’d been a little confused on what he’d meant, as magic had seemed very different from her science courses in school but she felt like she had a basic understanding of what he’d been trying to say when she’d visited.

“Right, well, you know how we have machines and things that make electricity? How you can’t access electricity directly? Well it’s a similar thing with magic, for most people anyway, you can’t directly access magic you have to have some sort of medium. For us this is what the wand and the words are for, they’re like buttons that you push in a certain order, that pull some levers here and there and produce what you want. It’s a roundabout… higher level way of accessing the universe.”

He paused an uncertain look on his face, as if trying to see if she comprehended or not, and she felt her face flush as she thought to herself that she had never met anyone her age who was smarter than her. She had always been the best academically, even in Hogwarts she had considered herself at least close to Harry, certainly better than him on essays but the way he looked at her as if he wasn’t certain she could grasp what he was saying was almost more than she could bear. The worst part was that she wasn’t entirely certain she did understand, she wanted to say yes, but she hadn’t thought about things like that and some of the words he was using just seemed odd to her.

In the meantime he had started up again, an odd mixture of the two Harry’s she knew, the uncertain one and the one who only had confidence, “Language is a better metaphor than machinery. What is the purpose of language, Hermione?”

He didn’t pause very long, not long enough for her to answer, so it must have been rhetorical.

“Language exists so as to communicate ideas from one being to another, in creating language we are offered almost unlimited possibilities of expression, but we are also limited by the language we know. Some might argue that without the word the idea does not exist, so that we become bound by the tool we use, and forget that the original thought is not confined to word and grammatical structure. Magic, as it is taught here and now, is very similar. It is so unthinkable to access magic without the medium of the wand and the word that we forget that magic exists outside of the wand and the word. Say Ollivander died, all the wand makers died, most people at least in this country would become just as magicless as any muggle because they are so crippled by their dependency on tools. The power is not the tool, Hermione, that is half the trick.”

He later went on to explain that for all the work he did in school the wand was superfluous, in fact he didn’t have any of the spells memorized as she did as there was no need, for him it was the thought and the will and overall the state of mind that mattered.

“It’s really hard, without stuff,” He said later as they were preparing to cast a wandless _lumos_ , “You have to want it, you can’t picture a world in which this doesn’t happen, but more than that you have to see it.”

His hands gestured uselessly in the air in front of him, his face already one of frustration, as if he knew he had already failed to explain it and she had already failed to cast it.

“Harry, I can do it.”

And so he shrugged and a soft glow of light appeared in his hand, a small orb that wasn’t like sunlight or a lightbulb but something else, a Harry-light that belonged to him all on its own. It floated above his hand as if caught in some gentle breeze and eventually rested in his pale fingertips.

Think of light, a small light, like an orb, picture it Hermione in your hand just sitting there, _lumos_ but without the wand. Don’t think about how you’ve never done it on purpose before without the wand, how it would be so much easier with the wand, just think about you and the light. So she sat there and she thought and the minutes ticked by and her hands remained empty.

“It’s not easy.” Harry finally said with that sheepish smile.

“I don’t understand.” And it was a small voice, because she had never not understood before, and feeling that way here with this was making her so small and so helpless. Like nothing had changed and she was still alone with no one to talk to.

He didn’t say anything back, he just looked at her, and that was almost worse.

* * *

Harry received three gifts that Christmas.

One wasn’t a gift, at least not the kind most people thought of, it was the type of gift you saw in television specials with the Grinch and the Whos and the true meaning of Christmas. Tom didn’t give him a real gift, Harry hadn’t really wanted one, real gifts meant Christmas was happening had happened and neither of them really liked the holiday. Instead Tom had just spent time with him, like Harry had never gone to Hogwarts at all, and they’d gone to the park and practiced magic and talked about things as if the holidays weren’t going to end. It wasn’t quite an illusion, they weren’t deluding themselves, but all the same it was nice to step away from Hogwarts and everything going on there.

The second was from Hermione, his first gift from anyone, a scarf with Gryffindor colors. Probably bought without too much thought, just to get him something, but all the same no one had ever gotten him anything before. The Dursleys had always avoided giving him clothes on Christmas so he wouldn’t mistake it for a gift, his birthday was hardly better, but here she was just giving him a scarf as if scarves were things people gave to Harry Potter.

The third was perhaps the most interesting because it was the least expected. He didn’t know who it was from.

They didn’t have a tree in the apartment so instead it was left just inside the doorway with a note addressed to him signed “Santa Claus” at the bottom. Supposedly it had belonged to his father.

After unwrapping it, discovering it was some kind of cloak, Tom’s eyes had narrowed and his voice had cut in, “That is not a gift I would have given to anyone.”

It was an invisibility cloak, a powerful one too, one that was not made of the usual materials. It looked old and when Tom ran his fingers through it he was frowning as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it or what to make of someone sending it to him. Whoever had given away an item of that power either was a saint (which Tom severely doubted) or had some sort of motive in giving it to him.

He took it to Hogwarts as he did Hermione’s scarf but he hadn’t touched it aside from that initial opening. Santa Claus, there were a few people who could sign their names Santa Claus and none of them he quite trusted.

It was very tempting though, when they returned, when he saw Quirrel stuttering and twitching at the top of the class he was very tempted to try it and see just what it was Quirrel got up to late at night when no one was watching.

So there he was, a few weeks into February, and the cloak in his hands late in the night as he decided what to do.

They couldn’t let Quirrel have the stone, not simply because he murdered Harry’s parents, but simply because there was something in Harry that would not allow it. Something about the idea of immortality, that kind of immortality that was forced into a person and choked them to death, made him shudder inside. However, that being said, given Tom’s disquiet as well as the invitation laid out Dumbledore could not be trusted with the stone either.

That kind of power you couldn’t trust with anyone.

Everyone had exited the common room by that point, disappearing up into the various dormitories, leaving him alone with the sound of the ticking clock and the feel of that smooth fabric in his fingers.

“Use Me”, it seemed to say the way Alice’s bottles had once said “Drink Me”.

_This is getting pretty complicated._ Harry commented to Tom in his head but Tom was a bit more absent than usual and was giving no response.

So it was just Harry, Harry alone, with an invisibility cloak in his hands.

Well, he wasn’t getting any younger.

With that thought it seemed as if there wasn’t any decision to make at all, he made his way out of the common room and threw the cloak over his head beginning to wander the halls. For the most part they were empty, the occasional prefect roaming about, but otherwise they were silent and still.

He didn’t immediately check the third floor corridor, he knew what waited in there, instead he made his way leisurely around it to see who might be stopping by. It was because of that meandering trail he lead, opening this door and that, that he eventually found the room with the mirror.

“Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.” He sounded out reading the inscription on the mirror.

For a moment he was more than a little afraid to look inside, Tom had never warned him about mirrors specifically but there was something about them, about looking into it and seeing yourself back that made him pause. However this wasn’t a night for hesitation, he had already used the cloak, it seemed fitting enough that he should also look into the mirror.

Pulling off the cloak he let it pool at his feet and simply looked.

It did not reflect himself, he was there but he was not himself, it was an older Harry Potter staring back but it was not simply Harry Potter. He stood alone, magic swirling about his feet in that indescribable form that it sometimes took, but in his eyes there was Tom as well and Harry could see it so easily, could see their faces blending and overlapping until there truly was no distinction between Tom and himself. The world around him, them, appeared to be in flux like that of the diary twisting this way and that so that it wasn’t any sort of reality at all. Only the man, the man with two faces and no name, was still.

For a moment he thought he glimpsed Hermione peeking out of the edges of the shifting scenery but she too was replaced by the constant movement of the world in the glass.

And all the while the man simply stared back at him with eyes that were too knowing and too inhuman to look at directly. On his face was a small almost delicate smile.

It took quite a bit of effort to pull his eyes away.

_Tom, what was that?_

During his moment with the mirror Tom had entered his mind more forcefully so that they had both been staring into it, Tom was silent though, filled with a quiet unease that was similar to the one he had once had about Quirrel and whatever was lurking in his head.

Finally, after a long silence where Harry returned to reading the inscription and not looking into the glass, Tom said, _It’s the mirror of Erised, it is said that it shows your heart’s deepest desire._

_But what was that?_

Tom didn’t answer most likely because he didn’t have to.

It was funny, he’d think later as he crept back to his room, how he didn’t see his parents alive, him and Tom as a family, himself with friends, or anything else for that matter. Desire was deep though, deeper than Harry had fathomed, and looking into it was like looking into a well where he could not possibly hope to see the bottom.

In his dreams, when he drifted further from Tom and consciousness, that image waited for him staring back from a barren landscape.

* * *

Monitoring the boy’s uncle was having little to no results, he was a private person, solitary, and perhaps even more than a bit careful. That first report Severus had given Albus was by far the most detailed, after that there had seemed nothing much to add, certainly nothing changed.

The Potter brat had come and gone for the holidays, Granger had visited once, and that had appeared to be the end of it. There were other small details, the man was not religious for one, but nothing that would lead them in any meaningful direction.

Perhaps he was inspired by Potter, the way Potter pushed and prodded him during class, in a manner so deliberate that if it had come from anyone other than an eleven year old then it might have given him pause.

Whatever the reason he decided that it was time to up his game and revisit the young Mr. Evans.

He’d sent a letter ahead of time claiming the meeting was to discuss some of Potter’s behavioral issues, of course this was not standard Hogwarts policy, it was usually the policy of the school to remove parental influence particularly the influence of muggle parents as they didn’t understand the difference in culture. Had Granger been acting out he would never have been sent to her home however the pretext was sound enough to keep Evans from guessing his true purpose there.

“Ah, Professor Snape, good to see you remembered your way.” The young man said opening the door with a tight smile. Again Severus was struck by how odd he appeared in person, his features delicate and with a slight feminine cast to them, and those eyes that strange pale blue that seemed so clear and distant all in the same moment.

He looked terribly young, Severus had thought it before, but now seeing him for a second time he considered it again. Had he not been given documentation, and had the man not had his intelligence and maturity, Severus would have guessed him to be a late Hogwarts student perhaps even a fifth year student.

He did not look twenty one by any means.

“Yes, thank you.”

With that Thomas Evans motioned him in with a tight smile worn more out of politeness, a bit of ice edged in his eyes as well, but whether this was at the idea of Potter’s misdemeanors or at Severus himself was hard to tell.

“So, you wished to discuss Harry?” The man asked once the table had been cleared and tea had been placed before each of them.

He had thought, before arriving, that he might choose his words carefully with this boy’s uncle but then he rarely got this opportunity. Albus would hardly listen to Severus’ complaints and the other faculty members assumed he was biased, strange as it seemed this act of espionage might be his only chance to truthfully speak his concerns about the boy and at least be taken somewhat seriously.

“The boy is a menace.” Severus said but the man made no obvious movements of either discomfort or anger, “Arrogant, juvenile, and entirely without discipline. In a manner of months he has received an unheard of number of detentions for his lip.”

Again those eyes appeared to be studying him, cutting him down, not with legilimancy but with an expression so close that Severus had to steady himself to not double check his occlumency barriers. For a moment though Severus thought he saw a hint of amusement in that expression, as if Severus was being unwittingly funny, but it was gone almost before he could label it.

“Is he? That’s a bit unusual. Harry’s very quiet, under normal circumstances.” He paused taking a sip of his tea and staring off into space, “Of course, you did fail to inform him that he was the messiah.”

“What?”

A half smile quirked on the man’s lips before disappearing, “The messiah, professor Snape, I suppose it might be a muggle expression. It denotes the savior of humanity, descended from God, and given what the text books detailed about his early encounter with the dread wizard You Know Who in October of 1981 I thought the term applied rather neatly. Messiah is much cleaner than Boy Who Lived.”

He felt for a moment the irrational urge to snap back at the man and let him know that he knew exactly what a messiah was simply he had no desire to ever associate the label with Potter. And again he reminded himself that he had not brought himself here to complain but rather to gather information so it was with control gained through many years of occlumency that he kept his temper in check.

“He is hardly the messiah, Mr. Evans.” He said before adding, “The events of October 1981 are in much debate, even ten years after the fact, I thought it best that we not approach the topic when discussing his schooling.”

“Of course.” The man said with a shrug before saying, “It would explain though why Harry has a bit of a bone to pick with you though.”

“He is eleven, he has no right to have bones to pick with anyone.”

The young man lowered his tea back onto the table, his smile growing wider, and Severus couldn’t help but picture a shark that had just smelt a great deal of blood in the water and was lazily swimming towards the source, “Oh, that’s an interesting opinion, when I was eleven I had many different bones to pick. I digress though, consider young Harry Potter. An orphan, raised in an abusive home for eight years, and then he discovers that he is secretly the savior of a culture he has never heard about and was left abandoned by them for ten years. Now, consider the image you present as an authority figure, one who leaves very important information such as a student’s potential divinity and political standing out of the discussion introducing the boy to this culture. Why would professor Snape do such a thing?”

He had noted the coldness before, in their last discussion, but he had not seen it in action and it was strange that just by the man’s tone of voice he was left wary. The man had shown no power, no hint that he wasn’t a muggle, but that steady cool determination was enough to cause Severus who had once killed men with such ease to become wary.

“Perhaps, as you said, he wished to avoid complicated issues however that is a rather weak excuse. Instead, the young Harry Potter is left with the impression that professor Snape wished him to be somehow hindered entering this world, to not be at an advantage, and then he has to wonder why professor Snape would want that. So there are bones to pick, I’m afraid, there are always bones to pick.”

He paused, simply looking at Severus, and without words conveying bitter amusement as well as exasperation at his presence as if he were nothing more than an idiot boy who had stumbled into something he knew nothing about.

“So, then, you wished to discuss Harry’s behavior in class?”

On reflection Severus had learned little more during the meeting than he had before, it was clear that Thomas Evans was well versed in arguing, that he was calm and collected and radiated danger even if he himself was not dangerous. Whether he was a wizard or not, dark or light, remained unclear. There was only that feeling of unease, the same unease he sometimes felt with the brat in potions, as if Severus was playing the role of a vaguely amusing fool complete with the jester’s hat.

He had been deflected, masterfully deflected, back to the topic he was supposedly there for but away from the books on magic he had seen lining the room as well as Evans’ thoughts on wizards and his cousin Harry Potter. Of the questions Severus had intended to ask, not simply the ones he had asked, he had not spoken one in the entire meeting.

The man was not simply intelligent then, intelligence was Granger with her nose in books and her arm waving about enthusiastically in the air for attention, he was also profoundly clever.

He may not have gained any indication whether the man was a wizard or not, he would tell Albus soberly in their next meeting, but he was beginning to suspect just by the way he talked that this man was perfectly capable of pretending to be without magic for some other unknown purpose.

Albus would not be pleased, and yet, it was the only conclusion that Severus could find himself reaching.


	15. Chapter 15

Later, thinking back on it, Hermione didn’t know what to think.

First, she thought to herself, she didn’t know everything. It was as if she had walked into a book somewhere near the middle, no near the climax, but had only just walked in with no understanding of the situation or the characters. And she left too, just before the knight went off to face the dragon, she’d waited just outside the castle and wondered just what dragons looked like.

Overall, shivering in the dark by herself, staring at cold flames that led to some other unknown room she had thought that she wasn’t supposed to be there that something had gone wrong to allow her to participate at all.

In the end it was really only because of Norbert, Hagrid’s baby dragon, that she was able to see any of the story at all.

It’d been late Spring, their exams approaching and Harry seeming just as tired as ever, he still did wonderfully in class. Always beating her in Charms and Transfiguration, except on essays of course, but his heart didn’t seem in it.

She rarely asked what he was thinking about, mainly because he rarely answered or if he did it didn’t make much sense. One time, after Potions, when he had been looking particularly distracted she had asked and he’d responded with a single word, “Erised.”

Looking up erised in the library later the only thing she could find was that backwards it spelled desire. That wasn’t what she thought he meant though.

For the most part though, as Harry had promised before Christmas when Hagrid had first uttered the name Flamel, things had remained as they were. Well, she had Harry which was different than before, but she studied and practiced magic and did all the usual things she had before all signs of mysteries and investigating forgotten. The only difference really was Harry attempting to teach her magic, but since it was only an attempt, she had yet to actually do anything without a wand she didn’t want to count it. That was always disappointing, walking out of the Room of Requirement feeling worthless, and Harry just searching for words to console her. That had seemed like enough mystery even if every once in a while she had the feeling that it wasn’t enough for Harry.

He never asked for her to be involved again though, not like he had when he’d originally asked her to visit Hagrid, so she had felt that somehow she wasn’t allowed to. It was as if she had missed her opportunity, that critical moment of choice, and now that she had made it she could never go back on her decision.

They’d taken up visiting Hagrid every once in a while, she liked Hagrid even if his cooking was atrocious; he was a very nice man and certainly knew a lot about magical creatures. He was always happy to see them, particularly Harry, though sometimes it seemed as if Harry wasn’t entirely sure why he was visiting Hagrid.

It’d been harder to tell the two Harrys apart recently and she wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, most people weren’t two people after all, but Hagrid was one of the few instances where the old Harry she knew really came out. He wouldn’t necessarily say anything but he’d get this sullen look as if he was forcing himself through it.

“It’s that damned orphan complex.” Her Harry had cried in frustration at one point on the way to the hut, “Even mention your parents and as soon as you hit an emotional bind you go running to them!”

Either way they returned on a weekly basis, Harry either acting desperate (always asking about his parents, his mother, his father, but sometimes about other things as well) or moody about being there at all.

“I had an unpleasant dream.” He explained for his behavior to her at one point, “It’s led to an identity crisis which apparently leads to Hagrid.”

It was only a matter of time then that they discovered the dragon.

They were visiting in the evening, an unusual time for them as they normally went during lunch or else right after classes had finished, and managed to startle Hagrid when they knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” Hagrid asked, but it was flustered, as if he was trying to hide something or had just been caught in the middle of something important.

“Harry and Hermione, is it a bad time?” Harry asked in her Harry’s tone, that dry and sharp tone that seemed to cut everything into pieces.

“Oh it’s just you two, you gave me a scare.” There was then some banging from inside and the door opened to reveal Hagrid’s face but nothing of the inside of the hut. “Come on in, be quiet about it though.”

So with raised eyebrows she and Harry walked in wondering what could possibly be the matter. It was fairly evident as soon as they walked in that something big was the matter.

“Why is there an infant dragon on the table, Hagrid?”

Hagrid beamed at them and the dragon, “Ain’t he cute, little Norbert I’m calling him, little rascal already though.”

“Oh I’m sure that fairly soon he’ll be a rather big rascal.” Harry said under his breath with a strained smile on his face.

“Hagrid! Dragons are really dangerous, why, how, why is there a dragon at Hogwarts?!” Hermione had never seen a dragon of course but she’d read about them. Not just in her old fantasy novels either but in magical reference books and from what she’d read they sounded very large and very dangerous; certainly too large and dangerous to have at a school.

All of a sudden she remembered the first time they had visited Hagrid’s where Harry had said Hagrid was dangerous, that he had once raised a giant man eating spider inside Hogwarts that had killed someone. She had assumed it was a joke in poor taste at the time but looking at the tiny scaled thing on the table, the size of her chest, with yellow lizard eyes and teeth like knives she wondered if he had been kidding at all.

“Shh, Norbert’s a good boy. He won’t cause no trouble.” Hagrid said before explaining, “I won him in a card game a few months back in the Hogshead. Cute little feller too.”

“Cause any trouble?!” She exclaimed and she couldn’t help but think that it was a dragon and that Hogwarts was a castle and dragons generally took over the castles and ate everyone inside, “Hagrid he’s a dragon!”

“Positively adorable, Hagrid. Are you going to call him Bert?” Harry asked seemingly unflappable in the face of Hagrid having a dragon, as if he had expected this all along.

“Harry! It’s a dragon, try to take this seriously!” Hermione screamed over at him to which he just raised his eyebrows.

“I am taking this very seriously, Norbert’s name is no joking matter, Hermione.” “It could burn down the school!”

And then in a softer, but somehow no less harsh, with a shadow passing over his face he replied, “Yes, I suppose it could.”

Here Hagrid interrupted, “Now Hermione, he’s a good little feller who never caused no problems. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

She took a deep breath then, quelling the part of her that just wanted to scream that it was a terrible decision or to ask Harry why he was so unconcerned like he wanted Hogwarts to disappear. There were too many thoughts spinning in her head, Harry, Hagrid, and a dragon that it was hard to keep them straight. Finally, in a calmer tone, she said, “Hagrid, Norbert needs to be with other dragons. He can’t stay here at Hogwarts even if he is a… good dragon. He needs to go on a reservation where there are other dragons and people who know how to care for him.”

She thought her argument was very convincing, and it seemed as if he considered it for a few moments, but then he looked over at little Norbert scratching the table and back to them. “I think you kids should get back to the dorms, it’s almost curfew.”

And so there they were, standing outside of Hagrid’s hut in the dark after hours because Hermione had gotten so distracted by the fact that there was a dragon that she hadn’t checked the time and they were going to get caught by a prefect and then Hogwarts would burn down. She’d thought, after receiving her letter and being introduced to wizarding culture by professor McGonagall, that she’d have a little more time at Hogwarts than that.

“That went surprisingly well.” Harry noted as they stared in at Hagrid’s lit windows.

“Harry we have to do something!” Hermione said looking at him, “We have to tell a professor or…”

He cut her off with a sideways glance, “Oh that’s already been done, Hermione. I told you that near fifty years ago Hagrid was expelled for raising an acromantula on Hogwarts grounds, if it didn’t work the first time I doubt it will work the second, besides if we turn him into the authorities now he might actually go to Azkaban. Certainly he’ll be fired.”

And Hermione just couldn’t do it then, she couldn’t do the sensible thing and go to professor McGonagall or headmaster Dumbledore because she liked Hagrid. Even when he was raising dragons in his hut she liked him and she didn’t want him to go to prison or get fired. Not for something like this and maybe this time if they explained it rationally to him, told him why he couldn’t raise dragons, then he’d listen.

“We still have to do something!” Hermione said forcefully, “As Gryffindors it’s our duty to save our school from being eaten.”

“Is it?” Harry asked looking to the sky for answers, “Well then I suppose we have no choice, a heist it is.”

She didn’t know how he managed to summon the dragon from outside the window, or how he got Hagrid not to notice, it was that special Harry brand of magic that she only glimpsed and never understood. Either way soon enough the dragon was writhing in his arms and he was pulling out an odd looking cloak from one of his pockets, he must have somehow added to the spatial dimensions in it, and draped it over her, his, and Norbert’s head.

Under the cloak she was suddenly very close to Harry so that she was staring right into his eyes, it was strange, even in the dark she could tell how green they were. They always seemed to glow, filled with light, and sometimes when she saw them in the right angle all she could do was stare.

“It’s an invisibility cloak.” He said reverting back to the normal Harry persona, “Make sure you stay under it or you’ll be seen, okay?”

(It wasn’t until later, after everything had happened, that she wondered where he could have found something as rare as an invisibility cloak and if he had owned it the whole time.

Just how many secrets did Harry Potter have?)

She nodded dimly and they were off.

As they entered the castle he quietly explained under his breath what they would be doing with the dragon, “Ron has a brother, Charlie, who works with dragons in Romania. If we can get to the owlery and send Norbert to him then everything should be fine.”

“You’re going to send a dragon via mail?” She had hissed out under her breath to which he had sheepishly responded.

“I know it’s not the best idea, and honestly I was probably going to try… Well it will probably work. We can’t leave Norbert around that long though, every day he stays it’s more likely Hagrid will be discovered and if he gets too big then…”

“Well I don’t like it.” She said but she didn’t say that there was a better option. As odd as it was she had faith in Harry, that he could somehow pull this off even if he didn’t have a mailing address and was trying to mail a dragon of all things. She believed he could do it.

So they headed upwards in the castle towards the astronomy tower for Harry to do something, any other night and they probably would have made it, but they passed by the third floor corridor and heard music.

A single solitary flute, the notes drifting down the hallway, and with the sound of it Harry froze in his tracks. His head turned slowly, almost unwillingly and he took the cloak off from both of their shoulders, his eyes seemed dazed as if they weren’t there at all.

“Not tonight.” He said shaking and just standing there for a few moments. He then looked at her, and she thought she had never seen anyone look so afraid as he said, “Hermione, you need to go home now.”

“But Harry, Norbert and…”

“Norbert has to wait, I’m out of time.”

He looked down at the dragon in his arms, and his expression was pained and uncertain, the dragon stared up at him and their eyes met for a few moments. Then the dragon was gone, just as the troll was gone, and it was like Norbert had never existed in the first place. Then, with robotic mechanical movements, he picked the invisibility cloak off the floor and stuffed it back into his pocket all while making his way to the door that led to certain death.

And all of a sudden she couldn’t think about things like being caught after hours and given detention, or Norbert disappearing and being sent off to Romania possibly or somewhere else, and all she could see was Harry walking towards the door with a stiff gait like she wasn’t there at all.

“I’m coming with you!”

It echoed, louder than the music, he stopped and turned to look at her without expression on his face. And she wondered how desperate she looked, how afraid, but even so she was determined to stand by her words.

He didn’t say anything, he just kept walking, and she ran to catch up.

The rest was almost like a dream, like it wasn’t really her life, the door creaked open and a three headed dog (the one Harry had once described to her) was sleeping to the sound of the ethereal flute. Quickly and silently they opened the trap door that it was resting nearby and jumped into the black pit beneath, only as they jumped they began to float, Harry clutching her hand tightly so that they drifted downward as if using _Wingardium_ _Leviosa_. In his other free hand brilliant light appeared and beneath them there was the sound of things withering.

“Devil’s Snare…” Hermione said looking beneath them in wonderment, at the black vines retreating into the shadows, by the time they reached the bottom the floor was very nearly clear the vines desperately embedding themselves in the walls where the light couldn’t reach them.

Harry wasn’t stopping though, instead he grabbed her hand and they continued forward into the next room and immediately they had to stop because of the noise and flurry of glittering things flying about.

“Are those… keys?” She asked but Harry was staring up at the ceiling looking for one in particular, he only looked up for a few moments though before walking to the door.

He stood with his hand on the knob and twisted it, it remained shut of course.

“Let me try…”

“ _Alohamora_ isn’t going to cut it, Hermione.” He said quietly and then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. For a moment he was perfectly still, just standing there like a statue, then the knob twisted and they were through the door.

What, she wanted to ask, was that if it wasn’t a wordless and wandless _Alohamora_?

They did have to slow down for the next one though, this room was a lot larger than the last two had been, and Hermione couldn’t help but think that with the flying keys and now this that she had somehow fallen down the rabbit hole like Alice instead of through a trap door. It was a giant chess set, not the normal kind with faceless abstract pieces, but a wizard’s chess set with figures carved from marble and granite staring at each other with solemn expressions.

On the board there were a few empty positions.

“Do… Do we have to play?” She asked but then she wondered why, she wasn’t even sure why she was here or what they were doing, the corridor was supposed to be very dangerous and so far it had only seemed a bit surreal. She didn’t really know what she was doing she was just passively going along for the ride and pretending while Harry was driving forward with a desperation she had never seen in him before. In books the knights didn’t feel like this, sometimes they despaired and sometimes they felt lost, but they never trudged forward without a reason as if they knew the author was simply pulling them by their puppet strings through the plot.

Again he appeared to be thinking deeply, just staring at the chess board and then the door past the other side. “No,” He said very quietly then, “We don’t have time for chess.”

When he took her hand this time there was an odd sensation, almost like the first time she had held her wand but more so, so much that he had to tug on her hand for her to walk forward after him. Everything looked the same and felt the same but she could feel something, not with her skin but with something else, drifting over her like a soft breeze. The chessmen on the other side of the board let them pass without so much as a glimpse.  

That felt wrong, she didn’t know why or how to rationalize it, but she knew that it shouldn’t have been that easy that it was somehow cheating. They had cheated their way through all of it, the vines, the keys, but with the chess set it seemed almost more so and behind her she could see the carved faces of the pawns looking at them in condemnation.

She was almost relieved when they left that room behind.

There wasn’t anything in the next room, just a feeling like something was missing, like something had been torn out of reality and had left a hole. She and Harry just stared at the room for a while on entering, this one much narrower than the others, feeling dark and enclosed.

It felt wrong, as limited as that word was it was the most representative, it just felt wrong.

“The troll was supposed to be here.” He said.

Hermione thought about it, and realized that of course he meant _that_ troll, the one from Halloween except why would it be here, and how, and where had it gone after Harry had made it disappear? And how did Harry know that the invisible hole, that thing she could only feel but not see, was supposed to be the troll?

“The troll… but Harry… the troll…” She said and trailed off, he looked at her and smiled grimly without saying a word. The troll, whatever it had been doing was gone, and just by looking at his face she knew it was never coming back.

“Come on, it looks like we still have to keep moving.”

She stopped, suddenly unwilling to go further and merely participate in the dream, “Harry, what are we doing here? Why are we here at all? What’s going on?”

“We don’t have time for explanations.” He said stiffly making his way to the door without her.

“Harry, please, just tell me!”

He stopped just before opening the next door and looked back at her, again that determined expression replaced by the mindless fear, “You wouldn’t understand even if I told you. It’s… I don’t even have the words.”

“Try, Harry!”

“The philosopher’s stone is about to fall into the hands of an abomination. Something that shouldn’t exist that eats at existence with its very presence. It’s not natural, Hermione, it shouldn’t be.” He sighed then and opened the door to the next room, “I can’t explain…”

And he couldn’t, she thought later, he couldn’t explain the dragon he had faced whatever it had looked like before or after. He had only grasped at words in the way that she grasped at his magic, they never quite reached it, so that by the end of it she was only left with the haunting feeling that she didn’t understand and that the shadows hid the eyes of demons.

It was the next room where her journey stopped, perhaps he could have taken her all the way as he had so easily in the rooms before, but he didn’t or couldn’t. This room didn’t have a door like the other, instead there was a wall of flames, beyond which nothing could be seen, and illuminated by the fire were three bottles and a piece of parchment.

Harry walked towards it and read the parchment before quickly picking up the smallest bottle and looking inside, he then looked at her and said, “There isn’t enough for both of us.”

“Harry?”

And again there was no explanation of why they were in the room, of what the abomination was, of why it had to be Harry and not a professor or anyone else who had to stop it, there was only his eyes on her filled with so many different emotions that she couldn’t name them all.

It was only a moment, a single wordless moment, and then he drank the potion and stepped through the flames leaving her behind.

She would see him the next day, looking more tired and perhaps a bit more frail than he had before, and she tried to smile at him but for a moment he couldn’t smile back. He had looked so tired, so very old.

In the end he just offered her a slightly strained smile and said, “I’m so sorry.”

* * *

He had a feeling, even when he had first glimpsed the mirror in that forgotten classroom, that he would see it again. Along with the words inscribed at the top he felt there were invisible ones running beneath ones that spelled out fate in intricate curling letters.

This was the way things were, so that Quirrels, notebooks, and mirrors converged into a single point. It was the way the world was truly written.

It seemed almost like one of his dreams in that respect, walking up to Quirrel facing the mirror and muttering to himself, the back of his head like a sore in the universe looking at Harry with eyes that were not eyes. It would be very like his and Tom’s shared dreams to place Quirrel and the mirror together in a cavernous room where one entered through flame.

At the sound of Harry’s footsteps Quirrel turned to face him, he looked sallow, worn, almost at the end of his rope as Tom had predicted in December. There seemed nothing more than puppet strings keeping him on his feet, his eyes already glazed over as Dudley’s had once been.

(He was so very afraid, in his mind it was the constant pounding of drums, the dreaded fear of looking it in the face.)

“Ah ah ah…” He began his tongue tripping over itself as it always did, his eyes closing as he tried to stutter his way to the end of the sentence, “M…mmm… mister Potter. Hhhhh… h.. how ki… ki.. kind of you to co..come.”

He offered him a weak smile, the kind that was supposed to terrify, the villain’s smirk but only managed to look sickly and wasted. Harry stopped walking and simply stared at him. Even when not facing it directly he could still see it, leeching off of Quirrel, that nameless thing that Tom called Voldemort but Harry couldn’t bring himself to call anything.

And there he was again only eight years old, alone outside his body, unaware of what was happening only that he was alone and not alone at the same time and that it was staring at him and coming closer. Get out of my head, he wanted to scream at it, get out of my head.

He just stood on the stairs and looked at Quirrel.

Quirrel raised his wand pointing it at Harry, “I… I’m… I’m afraid thou… though that our br…brief ac…acqu..acquaintanceship has to co..come to an end.”

Harry couldn’t speak then, his words would only have been the fear that desire to flee that he couldn’t dispel, trying not to stare but doing it all the same. It wasn’t Tom who spoke either, though he was so very present in Harry’s thoughts, instead it was a strange mixture of them both until neither and both were speaking at once and the words belonged to nothingness, “You’ll die anyway."

That stopped him, his smile drifted from his face, “Wh… What?”

“Die, you are dying, you are going to die.” He said, they said, and took a step towards Quirrel and it.

“Foo..Foolish boy. Do… don’t… you… kno..know who I se..serve?” Again that smile returned but this time with a forced strength the wand and hand shaking, “I…ho..host…the..dar…dark…lo…”

He didn’t make it to the end of the sentence, as it was the dark lord, Voldemort, whatever it was lingering and festering in the back of his head was getting impatient. Harry didn’t know how it had found language, but it rasped it out all the same, in a high pitched voice that had nothing human in it, “Use the boy.”

Quirrel was the puppet, puppets don’t serve masters, they only dangle and dance on command. Wooden little boys didn’t have reasons, couldn’t long for immortality with desperation, they could only hang with limbs suspended.

So instead Quirrel wordlessly grabbed Harry’s sleeve and jerked him down from the steps so that he was in front of the mirror and looking inside.

“Wh… Wha… What do… do… do… you see Po… Potter?” Quirrel asked.

It was strange, how he never saw what he expected to see in this mirror, the first time he had expected the Harry Potter that he presented himself as. An eleven year old boy, a little tired looking, but somewhat happy and for the first time in his life. He had thought he wanted that image so badly, but he didn’t, desire ran deeper than wishes.

This time he expected to see that mix, his mind as it was seemed halfway there with Tom in his head and neither of their words spilling out, the older Harry that was neither Harry nor Tom but a blend of both. Instead it was only the boy, only that shallow reflection of Harry, a boy with round glasses and wide green eyes, whose hair was in disarray and was a bit small for his age.

It was not Erised, nothing close to it, only what he presented to the world and what they took from him; behind the image of Harry Potter though he could see the stone, sitting deep within the illusion, with refracted light hitting its surface so that it almost seemed as if it glowed.

It looked like it had from Tom’s imagination, a small red stone, no larger than his fist, and in it such terrible red possibility.

In the mirror the Harry that was not Harry, but rather the idea of Harry, pulled the stone from its resting place and stared at it with a blank and almost sorrowful expression. Then, turning his head to Harry, his mouth moving to form words backwards, “yorr sma I” he placed the stone deep into Harry’s pocket where the cloak was also hidden.

“Myself, only myself.” He said quietly in answer to Quirrel but already it seemed as if the words were meaningless, weightless, and cast off into the ether where they would soon disintegrate.  

He didn’t know when reality, what he preferred to call reality, had come so readily to resemble the worlds in his head. Where everything drifted and words were luxuries that he didn’t often indulge in, he turned his head to look at Quirrel, at the aberration inside him.

_I will not be afraid. I will not flinch._

He reached out with one pale hand and grabbed the back of Quirrel’s head.

It was Tom’s memory, and not his own, that provided the most accurate description. To Harry it was like being burned alive but also being the burning, to transform into flame and light until there was nothing of Harry left only the screaming, the terror, and the horrific bright light. For Tom it was like becoming Thomas Evans, like exiting the notebook.

And the thing without a face screamed noiselessly, without mouth or breath, it screamed.

Distantly like the ringing of bells in London when they happened to pass a church on a Sunday, he heard Tom’s soft voice murmuring out words that were somehow louder than the moment in spite of their softness.

_"Once upon a time, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting about happily enjoying himself.”_

Holding onto the husk that was Quirrel, reaching out for the thing inside him, the room disappeared until there was only the magic and the burning with Harry nowhere in it at all.

_“He did not know that he was Zhou. Suddenly he awoke, and was palpably Zhou. He did not know whether he was Zhou, who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhou.”_

He closed his eyes, but his eyes were already closed, and somehow even when there was nothingness and everything at once he saw Tom. There was light all around him, dancing off pale skin, and in his eyes there were so very many colors, “Harry.”

He pulled Harry in close to him, even as something screamed, as everything burned, and magic breathed through him and beyond him. He pulled Harry in and there was the semblance of definition, of a being called Harry, even as he questioned what Harrys were and how they came to exist in the first place.

_“Now, there must be a difference between Zhou and the butterfly. This is called the transformation of things."_

(When he woke later, it was to an empty room, a stone in his pocket, and the charred remains of professor Quirrel beside him.)


	16. Chapter 16

There were some things that burned into your memory, even as you failed to understand or rationalize them they stayed with you all the same. Most people in a life might have one or two, that they would think and ponder over for some time, Tom had several already; the death of his father, his entrance and exit into the notebook, the many years residing within the notebook, and now the death of Quirrel.

However even as he first sat and remembered it, thought on the events miles away in London, eyes red and sleepless as he stared at Thomas Evans’ reflection in a mirror even he could not tell exactly what had happened.

After it had occurred, he had almost been thrown out of Harry’s mind. Not consciously as he had when he had stolen Harry’s body but it was a similar feeling so that he was shoved almost forcefully into Thomas Evans who had been lightly dozing on the couch where Tom had left him a few hours before. Flailing and blinking back into reality he had sat on the couch for a moment feeling incredibly disoriented and trying to piece together slowly but surely what exactly had happened.

Until the mirror it had all been rather straightforward. The inclusion of Hermione had thrown them both a little for a loop but it had seemed a mutual decision both to allow her to tag along and then to abandon her partway through. Still even so, things had seemed relatively normal up until that confrontation with Quirrel.

The set up was odd, more of an invitation than Tom had even expected, and had altogether made the whole process more than a little eerie but it had been comprehensible. The things that made him stop and pause had been so small and insignificant that in the rush of things they hadn’t warranted thought.  The troll, Norbert, the ease with which they defeated the obstacles, these were all inconsequential at the time and only now appeared alarming.

Just what had happened to Norbert and to the troll before him?

The terrible thing was that he didn’t really know and that for the most part he expected that Harry didn’t either. They were just gone.

In the end though it was that final scene, the dramatic confrontation with Quirrel, that had well and truly confounded him.

It was best, he found after remembering or trying to remember the scene, to focus on the facts and what had happened after returning to Harry’s consciousness.

Quirrel had died, had been burned alive by Harry, by them, by something and the stone had wound up in their pocket. Of Tom’s other half Voldemort there was no sign, whether destroyed or else vanished was left unclear, from their lack of a migraine though it was evident that he wasn’t in Quirrel’s charred remains.

On waking Harry had looked around and noted the mirror and Quirrel beside them, strangely enough it seemed that only Quirrel had suffered the effects.

The effects of whatever that was.

In the end Tom decided that it was raw magic, Harry’s magic, that power that he had always felt but so rarely seen something that went far beyond the usual wand waving and spell casting; this was the power that turned cities to salt and parted seas. Harry’s gifts were evident to any, but he had never truly had to try before, in that room Harry had been trying, if only slightly, and the results had been impossible to describe.

Tom Riddle had never had that much power, not as a human, and in his wildest imaginings he had not pictured that either. To him power had been sacrificing virgins, chanting at the moon, scenes filled with dramatic tension but very much imaginable. Splitting his soul in half had been the pinnacle of achievement; how could there be anything beyond such acts?

And yet there was.

Shortly after they had awoken Dumbledore had come for them, or rather for Harry with Tom hiding inside. Nowhere on his face the jovial expression of an old man, and his eyes had caught the traumatized looking Harry Potter and the charred remains of Quirrel and he’d said nothing. Tom had lurked in Harry’s head, just out of sight, watching through those green eyes as Dumbledore scanned the boy for injuries or anything else and then hurriedly brought them up to the headmaster’s office when it seemed he would not be needing the hospital wing after all.

“Lemon drop, Harry?” The man had asked offering the treats to the boy but Harry had simply stared forward not acknowledging the treats in the slightest.

Harry’s mind was still in that moment, in that dream like state he’d been in before, where reality and thought blurred together until nothing was solid and everything was drifting together. Lemon drops did not find themselves in that equation.

“I…” Harry started and from within Tom could feel something cracking, that dam of indifference, so that his face was etched in misery and he croaked out, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

But that wasn’t what was upsetting, after all, they both conceded that Quirrel was going to die that he had to die. Quirrel was a battery on its last few minutes of juice; in the room with the mirror he had already been a walking corpse. No, it was the way in which he was disposed of or rather the disposal in itself, the magic, which had Harry on edge.

Dumbledore stared at him for a few moments before responding, “I’m afraid so, my dear boy. However, professor Quirrel appeared to be living in unnatural circumstances as it was. If you could tell me what happened…”

The simplified version seemed to come from both of them, a story they had not quite agreed upon before but coming easily none the less. In it, Tom was nowhere to be found, instead Hermione and Harry had heard the music and realized that Flamel’s stone was in grave danger. Quirrel was still Voldemort, still explained the situation, but Harry never touched the stone. The stone, according to Harry, had never exited the mirror and he had never discovered it.

After Harry explained what had happened, how upon touching Quirrel the man had burst into flames, or something resembling fire Dumbledore had said, “Ah, I see, so dear Quirinus descended to such depths to allow Voldemort into his mind… Harry, understand that it was not your fault, you did as you had to, and I believe it was your mother’s love and no intent of your own that protected you from him as it did that night ten years ago.”

It was in both their heads then, a simultaneous thought, _He’s wrong._

Whatever that had been was not love, it was not hatred either, it had been beyond human comprehension and feeling. It had been magic, whatever magic even was perhaps the universe itself, in raw pure form that had allowed them to transcend the human state and in it there had been nothing and everything. But it had not been love.

“I wish…” Harry said before trailing off, he smiled weakly at Dumbledore, as if implying the end of that statement there and Dumbledore smiled back.

“You are a good boy, Harry, and you did what you needed to in order to protect both the school and Britain itself. Now if I may ask, you never retrieved the stone?”

“No.” Harry said, and even as he said it he looked Dumbledore straight in the eye, his mind an empty canvas for which Dumbledore could write his own answers. Tom looked out from behind and saw as Dumbledore came to his own conclusions.

“Well, then, I can only assume that it was destroyed with Quirinus.” He did not seem thrilled with that conclusion nor fully set upon it but it was the conclusion he was willing to give to Harry Potter.

The school year had ended rather swiftly after that. Harry took his exams, Slytherin won the house cup much to the disappointment of the Gryffindors, and Hermione stared at him with unvoiced concern as if not quite sure how to breach the topic.

Naturally Hermione Granger asked what happened when she saw them again, they gave little explanation, a similar story to the one they had given Dumbledore. She had seemed disappointed but accepting as if she knew that she would never fully hear what had happened in that last room.

But what could they have said?

And so there Tom was, in the form of Thomas Evans, awaiting Harry just outside the muggle barrier to platform nine and three quarters in King’s Cross station, thinking about things he couldn’t explain.

It was Harry, he had ended up deciding, not so much him.

His magic had changed on being a notebook, it allowed a change in perspective that most humans found daunting. Things like wandless magic became more natural but even so, inhuman as he was, he still was a derivative of humanity. At one point he had been Tom Riddle and that said a lot no matter how he wished that it didn’t.

He still relied on that system designed thousands of years before, the Latin spells and hand movements, when he thought instinctively he did not always think _light_ but sometimes _lumos_ even in the midst of creating his own higher language to reinvent the magical system. Even when thinking on that, in confronting what magic truly was in a way no wizard had ever done before, even then he could not have reproduced Harry’s magic had he been so inclined.

Harry didn’t play by their rules, that was the crux of it, and that was why it was so very disquieting.

When Harry stepped out of the barrier, stared across at Thomas Evans, they only looked at each other for a few moments each with the same grim expression on their faces.  

Strange, how there seemed to be almost nothing to say.

* * *

At the end of things it was best to keep a tally of the consequences of the year’s events, it seemed cleanest that way.

The stone, stored beneath the castle with defenses they had known were too shallow in order to best tempt and trap the dark lord wherever he might roam, had not been destroyed but was instead missing.

Quirrel, who after various magical tests and Potter’s account had been confirmed as hosting Voldemort throughout the year, had not quite been burned alive but something similar until only his charred corpse remained close to the untouched mirror. It was unclear whether this was Potter’s doing, Lily’s doing, or if it was some other magical force in play that they had not considered.

Harry Potter and Hermione Granger had made their way through the rooms to the stone with a speed that was almost uncanny, far faster than even Quirrel who had the benefit of experience and the dark lord in his head egging him on. Hermione Granger, after having been found in the second to last room looking quietly at the fire had reported incredible magical feats from Harry Potter not so much with surprise but with resignation.

Granger seemed to think that it wasn’t odd for an eleven year old boy to possess such capabilities, or rather, she didn’t seem to think that it was odd for Harry Potter to possess such wild talent.

When they’d questioned her on his wandless abilities she’d just given them this look, raised eyebrows and confusion in her expression, as if it was inconceivable that they should even have to ask.

Beyond these things, Harry Potter’s alleged magical capabilities, Quirrel’s demise, and the missing stone few things were clear.

“He is a natural occlumens I’m afraid, a rather powerful one too.” Albus had mused after meeting with the boy, “It’s not quite that nothing is there but rather that his thoughts are hard to grasp, I cannot tell what has happened to the stone or if he saw it at all.”

For the stone there were only a few options that seemed reasonable. One was that it had been destroyed in whatever had destroyed Quirrel, which given the signs of wild magic there as well as things Severus had never seen before could be a possibility. The other was that Harry Potter had taken the stone for himself.

However, with that in mind, had Potter desired the stone he could not have taken it from the mirror and it would have remained safely inside. But the stone wasn’t in the mirror and it wasn’t in Hogwarts.

As for Harry Potter himself Albus nor even Severus for that matter wanted to call him dark but they edged away from calling him light. Powerful, even Severus would admit that the brat had magical talent to an unheard of degree, exactly what one would expect from a prophesized child.

But what could one expect from a prophesized child?

And that was what he and Albus discussed at the end of the year, their first year in truly observing the boy who lived, when they had decide where to turn next and what would have to be done for the dark lord’s inevitable return.

“We’ll need to remove him from the uncle. Wizard or not it’s unsafe to leave him unsupervised over the holidays and out of hand, we cannot continue to leave him to his own devices.” Albus had stated with a sense of finality when school had ended and the boy as well as the others had been sent home for the holidays, “He’ll placed in a home of one of the order members, the Weasleys perhaps.”

“The Weasleys have enough mouths to feed and the boy didn’t exactly part well with the youngest son.” Severus commented but it hardly mattered, they would instead pick another Order member to place the boy with.

This was the decision they had delayed in making when Harry Potter had first resurfaced because there was more than a little ruthlessness involved with it.

What was left unsaid was how Thomas Evans was to be written out of the picture, these were the details that Severus would be left to deal with, Albus Dumbledore’s dirty work. For now it was only a broad statement of what had to be done for the greater good and nothing more, only later, in the midst of summer would they discuss precisely how to address the issue.

Still, thinking of that unnerving young man, if Severus had to dispose of any one muggle either by erasing his memories or framing his death as a kill by a pureblood extremist attempting to resurrect the fallen Death Eater movement then he would not be sad to see that one man go. In every meeting the young man had been far too intelligent for a muggle and more than that too interested in Harry Potter’s affairs. It no longer mattered whether Severus could find who he was or not because when the time came and the war reared its head again the man could not be allowed to intervene, to send Harry off to Beauxbatons or else a muggle school.

A bone to pick, he had said, and there had been no love for wizards in his eyes during that speech.

He doubted the man realized it but he had brought his future, whatever ill fortune it might contain, upon himself.

* * *

On the way back to London she spoke to Harry one last time that school year. There were plans to see him over the summer, of course, him and his uncle but somehow that wasn’t the same. That would be second year, which she very much hoped would be different from the first, and the first year would have already passed and been gone.

Hogwarts, she had expected more out of it, she loved parts of it more than she had loved anything else but others… In reflection it had not been the best of years even in comparison to her muggle primary school days.

She had only one friend, one friend that she didn’t always understand and who would always be more talented than she was. She had almost died, she had been terrified more than once, and she always felt as if there were so very many things she didn’t truly understand. Hogwarts made her feel small even as it gave her a wand and allowed her to do impossible things.

So there they were again, her and Harry, on the train just where they had started at the beginning of the year. He was staring out the window at Scotland rushing past looking unusually pensive, well unusually for anyone else, Harry always seemed to be thinking these days.

Even more than he usually thought, sometimes when they were studying for exams he would just stare out the window, his eyes somewhere else entirely and his books left untouched.

(Almost bitterly she remembered when she learned that it hadn’t affected his exam scores in the slightest, that he had still done unreasonably well in all his subjects, and she just found it so unfair that some people had to study and others didn’t. Harry Potter was one of those gifted individuals that you just wanted to punch all the time if only because he was so unbelievably good at what he did.)

She wondered if he was thinking about that night, she did, she always seemed to catch herself thinking about that night. When drifting off to sleep, or when on her own, her mind would always think about that barrier of flames and Harry on the other side.

“Harry,” She said interrupting the silence, “I… You don’t have to tell me what happened… It’s okay.”

He didn’t say anything, just looked at her, as if that sort of thing didn’t even merit words. She had no doubt that he wouldn’t tell her, or at least, not for a very long time. Still, at least he was looking at her, which was more than he did on some days.

“You know, I knew Hogwarts would be exciting I just didn’t… Well, it was a bit more exciting than I bargained for.” She prattled mindlessly, filling the silence, “I hope next year will be better, well, it has to be better. How many years like that can you have in a row after all? I hear we learn all sorts of interesting things next year, I wish they would let us practice over summer…”

He was still looking at her, but his eyes were so very distant again behind the glasses, like she wasn’t even there at all. She trailed off and blushed furiously, feeling a little affronted but also a little sad, just hoping he would try for two seconds.

Finally he responded, his words falling a little flat but there all the same, “I hope so too, that next year… That it’ll be different. It’s not really what they told us in the pamphlets, is it?”

“No, professor McGonagall never mentioned trolls.” Hermione noted wrinkling her nose slightly, she really liked professor McGonagall but perhaps she could have been a bit more clear on some of the dangers of attending. Then again the troll had seemed like an odd occurrence, she hadn’t even told her parents about it, but then what would she have written back to them?

“Or philosopher’s stones I imagine.” He added for her a small smile growing on his face, his eyes becoming clearer as he stopped thinking about whatever occupied his thoughts. She couldn’t help but smile back, feeling that even as serious as it all was it was something of a game between them. The Hogwarts they were told and the Hogwarts that was real, beautiful and tilted and horribly awful as it was.

“Or racism.”

“Or infant dragons.”

And so the train ride ended with both of them smiling back at each other, in spite of everything, and she was glad that even with all the secrets, violence, and everything else that she had gone to Hogwarts rather than anywhere else.


	17. Chapter 17

_“Harry Potter and the Transformation of Things”_

Hermione read off the title slowly, tasting it, wondering if it would fit. It wasn’t finished, wasn’t even really started, but her quill had put words on parchment so there it was anyway.

It’d been a whim really, that summer when she’d returned home and it’d been too quiet and Harry had lived too far away. Something to do when the summer homework had been a bit too easy, even after redoing it and checking her answers multiple times, and after reading all the next years textbooks (and there were quite a few of them particularly in Defense).

It was more than being bored though, because for boredom she had writing letters to Harry or else being around her parents, she’d wanted to do it. Her fantasy books had lined the shelves, filled with brave knights, dragons, and epic journeys and she couldn’t help but compare them to her own journey which seemed both epic and not at the same time.

Her story perhaps wasn’t as daring as there’s were, wasn’t as gripping, but all the same she wanted to write it down even if it wasn’t her story at all. It was really his, she was just narrating, like how The Great Gatsby wasn’t actually narrated by Gatsby or Jekyll and Hyde wasn’t narrated by Doctor Jekyll.

She’d been sort of insulted by her own thought at first, on how it was about Harry and not her, because everything did seem to be about Harry but it was also right.

It’d start with the Hogwarts Express, perhaps detailing a little about her situation in muggle primary school, nothing too detailed but enough to make people understand. Then it’d go on through her observations of the two Harry’s, one not necessarily worse than the other but both very different, and on through the year ending with the Hogwarts Express again and the uncertain school year ahead.

“It doesn’t seem like the ending to anything else I’ve read but maybe it’s like a series, where you end at one point in one book but only because there’s more coming; because it wasn’t really the end after all.” She’d said after describing her idea to Harry with a flushed face feeling more than a little embarrassed, after all what near thirteen year old girl spends her time writing fantasy books about her and her friends even if they did go to a magic school.

They’d been at Harry’s apartment again; his uncle didn’t own a car so it was easier for her to go to him than him to her, and besides whenever he visited her house he always seemed a little on edge. Like he didn’t know what to make of being alone with just her and her parents and a normal family; there was always a bit of steel in his eyes then.

They were sitting at that cluttered kitchen table, which always seemed to have new clutter whenever Hermione visited, with tea in the center and his uncle loitering in the living room with his own cup of tea working on some project that Harry said he had started the year before. She didn’t know if he was listening or not, she hoped he wasn’t because that would be dreadfully embarrassing, but regardless he pretended he wasn’t which she felt more than a little grateful for.

She never was sure what to make of Harry’s uncle, even after meeting him more than a few times over the holidays, he was so present and yet not in the same moment like he was larger than everyone else and had some fire burning within him. He never was any less pretty, even when tired and rumpled he still had that sharp edge to him, and she wondered if he even really knew it.

When she asked if he had a girlfriend Harry had first looked horribly confused by the question and then had broken out into hysterics.

Regardless she tried not to blush whenever his uncle was in the room or looking at her with those pale blue eyes, tried not to stammer when talking to him, and above all just tried to keep her cool like every good heroine should. Most of the time she didn’t exceed and felt mortified about it later, not wanting to sound like Lavender Brown of all people, but was just unable to do anything about it at all.

(Sometimes she caught a stray smile on his face, a smile so like Harry’s slight quirking of the lips, that she felt he knew exactly what was going through her head and found it vaguely funny.)

“That sounds like it covers everything, last year I mean.” Harry said with a shrug, dragging Hermione’s thoughts back to the story she had just outlined for him. “I can’t think where else it would end.”

She paused then and they looked at each other, and she knew even though she hadn’t said it aloud that he knew that she still wanted to ask just what had happened last year behind the curtains, because Hermione really only had half the story. He smiled at her slightly, a small sad thing that dropped from his face as soon as it was born, and sipped at his tea without a word.

She should have expected it but she felt something in her sink with disappointment regardless. How was it, that her best and only friend, had so many terrible secrets?

“Right, well, I think it will be fun.” Hermione said to cover the silence when it stretched on for too long.

“It’ll be really good, I know it.”

She’d smiled back at him, because he’d sounded so sure and no one had ever been so sure of Hermione, not when it didn’t come to books or grades.

“Well, I don’t have a title for it yet.”

She’d been reading Professor Lockhart’s extensive required reading list over the summer and they had always had such interesting titles but those didn’t seem to fit what she wanted to write. Hers wasn’t as blatant as that, not as heroic, and she felt that giving it a name like _Sunday with a Sorcerer’s Stone_ wouldn’t really fit. It just wasn’t that kind of a story.

A shadow had entered his eyes and he considered her for a moment, finally, as if the idea had only just occurred to him as he was speaking it he said, “Call it ‘The Transformation of Things’…”

(Out of the corner of her eye she caught Harry’s uncle stiffening slightly, an odd almost mechanical movement instead of an emotional one, but when she turned her head to look at him fully he was back to normal still staring at yellow notebook paper crossing things off here and rewriting them again with strange intent.)

She’d felt then as if that was some reference she should have understood, something she should have recognized, and even later when she still didn’t recall the phrase from anywhere she had taken the name from Harry because even if she didn’t know the words they still fit.

_“Harry Potter and the Transformation of Things.”_

She repeated to herself, and it did fit, because while there were dragons they weren’t the dragons you saw right away but were the ones that saw and watched you and just waited. And then, like tragedy rather than adventure, the beast was slain off-scene making you wonder if there had been a beast at all. That type of story, with heroes wandering off into the shadows only to come back pale and exhausted was the type that needed a title that did not razzle dazzle. Something plain, something vague, and something with weight and Harry had given it to her.

Before she lost her nerve she moved to the next piece of parchment and began to scribble down the beginnings of the first chapter.

_“Hermione Granger had always wanted friends…”_

* * *

He was staring at the stone again, twisting it this way and that in his hand, letting it catch the light so that the dark center could be seen like a jagged heart in the middle. Transparent in some parts, opaque in others, rough around the edges, jagged, there was nothing polished in it. It had been beaten, torn, and willed into existence until there it was the single philosopher’s stone in Harry Potter’s hand.

It should not exist.

He didn’t know why he had that thought, where it had come from, but the longer he held onto it the more he felt it. The stone should not exist, like Quirrell and the thing in Quirrell’s head, like the thing outside Harry’s head, it was an aberration and clashed against reality eating at it like a parasite.

He’d almost destroyed it, a few times at Hogwarts before he’d returned, and then a few times afterwards but something had always stopped him.

He and Tom had never openly discussed what to do with the stone now that Harry had it, Tom had never attempted to take it from him, to use it, or to even acknowledge its existence.

When Harry had stepped out of the platform into the greater King’s Cross, when he and Tom had stared at each other with no words left in their mouths, Tom hadn’t said anything at all about it. In the end it had been Harry who had brought it up.

They’d gone to the park they usually visited, sitting on a bench and staring at the early summer scenery, and Tom had started talking.

“There has only ever been one philosopher’s stone. There have been many who have attempted to create it, both before Flamel, and long afterwards on the side of wizards and muggles but only Flamel has ever succeeded and he has never managed to make a second.”

The bubble of quiet around them intensified both on Harry’s and Tom’s instinct, drawing tighter around them just in case someone was passing by or else watching them. These were the words they usually saved for dreams but Harry had wanted reality, stability, when he heard them and not the shifting mess inside his head. He’d needed that.

“The trouble is that even if one were to somehow to procure the only stone they would have no idea how it works. Flamel has never released his secrets on the methods of its use, has been very secretive about the entire process really, and so the thief is left with a rock that under some procedure can create gold from lead and eternal youth but with no idea how it is accomplished.” Tom sighed running a hand through his hair, parting gold curls into disarray, and looking altogether quite exhausted.

“If I were to guess at its actual function, how it works, then I would say that it is a battery. Mind you this is more the physics talking than alchemy but to have the energy necessary to transfigure lead into gold and stabilize it (without setting off a chain reaction that would decimate a city) a lot of energy would need to be involved; the same idea would apply to the constant transfiguration of older aging cells into their younger state. Of course, this is just a guess, just like everyone else I really have no idea.”

Harry had stared at him for a moment, at the slight smile that had grown on his lips at the admission that he simply didn’t know, and asked, “So even if you wanted to you couldn’t use it?”

“Not without great difficulty.”

And then Tom seemed to forget about it, focusing instead on updating the magical system, to move the focus away from wands and instead to hand motions and simplify the words used in spells.

Perhaps it was as simple as the fact that it required too much effort to use and Tom for the moment didn’t need it. With the Potter vaults at their disposal they had more than enough money to live on and Tom had never really felt the need to live in luxury, Harry had the feeling that he wouldn’t know what to do with it, as if wealth was never truly a thing that belonged to him.

More than that though Thomas Evans already seemed to be eternally young; in three years he still looked the same way he had when Harry had first seen him in the hospital. As a nineteen year old he had been pushing credulity with his appearance, as a twenty one almost twenty two year old it became more ridiculous. His features were sculpted but there was no hint of facial hair and altogether he just looked too young.

He made up for it with words, height, and just being Tom but it was starting to become more and more obvious that Thomas Evans looked off of his age.

But then, Harry thought to himself, if he doesn’t need money and he doesn’t age then he doesn’t really need the stone.

Nevertheless Harry had held onto it, and after the first few attempts at destroying it, he’d realized that it was because one day they might really need it after all. Tom might not need it now but something told him that Tom might need it later, that it would be good to have on hand even if its very presence itched in Harry’s brain. Harry was willing to do pretty much anything for Tom, Dudley had been evidence of that, so Harry kept it and stared at it and wondered if he was making the right decision after all because it looked like something that just wasn’t right.

Like something you didn’t touch.

* * *

Tom spent most of his time not thinking on certain topics.

It was an odd state of mind for him, one that had only come about after he had become a notebook when he would do just about anything to distract himself from the fact that reality was suspended. As a human he’d found such ideas to be weakness, that reality must be faced head on and those who deliberated or else hesitated were fools or cowards. There was something to be said about that, something to be admired even, but Tom would have gone insane long ago if he had kept to that philosophy.

He tried not to think of what had happened to his other half, what he had done to his other half, or what Harry had done to his other half. It wasn’t so much the fact that it was him, a piece of the greater him, but rather that there had been that initial fifty-fifty chance that it could have been him being burned alive by Harry and Voldemort tucked inside Harry’s head. This hadn’t occurred to him until a few days after it had happened but once the thought had sprung it couldn’t be recalled and he always found himself drifting to the fact that it had been so close to being him instead; the toss of a coin.

Of course it was more complicated than that, the other half of his soul had made decisions over many decades that Tom had found bizarre, violent, and nonsensical but nevertheless a thought was a thought.

The other topic he was avoiding was Harry. Harry was different since that night, not too different, he was still himself but there was something just a little bit off about him. Harry had always had odd aspects to him, things that even Tom Riddle hadn’t possessed as a human, but they’d always been blanketed by other more normal features.

Harry had the great desire to be loved, to be cherished and appreciated, to fit in with his peers and be accepted by a community. Beneath all that though was a raging river of power that seemed almost to have a mind and will of its own.

It wasn’t all the time, certainly it was subtle, but in his thoughts there would be an edge that had not been quite as blatant before. An echo in his voice that made it difficult to picture Harry as the almost twelve year old child he was instead of the being that had disposed of Quirrell with only the touch of his hands.

How did one avoid thinking about such worrisome topics?

They invented.

At least, that was what Tom found himself doing, and soon enough given the months in the spring where he had started it was beginning to come together. The basic framework of the hand motions for the spells, the logic behind it, had all been written out in pseudo instructions as if part of a greater program. There were many steps remaining, designing the runes to connect it to whatever the source of magic was, finding some power source to bind it and keep it in place, but never the less it was more headway in a shorter period of time than he had ever expected.

There was something to be said for escapism; it was certainly more useful than Tom Riddle had ever given it credit for.

Mostly though he felt as if he wanted to do something to differentiate himself from what he had been and then what he could have been. Terrorizing peasants as Voldemort didn’t hold appeal and in fact began to appear grotesque to him with Quirrell but he still wanted to be more than just someone who wasn’t being someone else. Thomas Evans needed purpose, recognition as being Thomas Evans, and with that came the desire to go beyond any other wizard before him by stepping in a direction they never would have considered.

That last meeting with Snape had solidified it for him, the man had looked over him, as Tom had intended to be looked over because it would only cause difficulties if he was identified as a too young Tom Riddle but still it had stung. He had not seen Thomas Evans but rather someone who wasn’t acting quite muggle enough to be satisfying; he had been restricted to an idea rather than a person.

Well, he was an idea, rather than a person, that’s what horcruxes were at the heart of things but all the same that line of thinking was becoming old. It was a shallow need, one that didn’t cut to the true heart of the matter, but it gave him something to do and some small amount of pride.

At the very least he would be doing something besides not being Tom Riddle and a distraction from the things he did not wish to consider.

**Author's Note:**

> Now this is one I actually do intend to come back to, because I do miss it dearly sometimes, but not for a while. Specifically not until some major current things wrap up.
> 
> Comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


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